kherseth Posted January 17, 2017 Report Share Posted January 17, 2017 Hi, I see both the 250K and 500K are out of stock, are there plans for another batch, or is production stopped? Thanks, Kim Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jack Gassett Posted January 17, 2017 Report Share Posted January 17, 2017 Due to Chinese New Year all production is shut down. When they return in a couple weeks I will look into another batch of boards, it is going to be at least 2 months before another batch can be made... Jack. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
offroad Posted January 21, 2017 Report Share Posted January 21, 2017 You could also order it from a distributor. For example, here it is on stock: http://www.exp-tech.de/papilio-one-500k edit: But then, is there any reason you need those smaller boards: The Papilio Pro is only marginally more expensive, they have it on stock here: https://www.seeedstudio.com/Papilio-Pro-p-1301.html# There are more distributors. If you search a little, you might find one closer to you. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johnbeetem Posted August 17, 2017 Report Share Posted August 17, 2017 Is the Papilio 250K coming back some day? For a long time I've recommended it as the best value for getting started with FPGAs and I'd like to know if I should still be doing so. I was playing with mine today and I love it way it downloads so quickly. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
offroad Posted August 17, 2017 Report Share Posted August 17, 2017 Hmmm... the old Papilios use the FT2232D USB chip, the newer ones (e.g. Papilio Pro) the FT2232H high speed variant. With a more recent board, uploads "should" be fast. I'm using high speed (30 MHz, clock divider 0) JTAG with the -H chip routinely. For xc3sprog, it may be enough to write cables.txt via command line option, then edit the clock rate. I think I've done that once and got upload times (but probably for a compressed bitstream) 200 ms or so. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johnbeetem Posted August 17, 2017 Report Share Posted August 17, 2017 4 minutes ago, offroad said: Hmmm... the old Papilios use the FT2232D USB chip, the newer ones (e.g. Papilio Pro) the FT2232H high speed variant. With a more recent board, uploads "should" be fast. I'm using high speed (30 MHz, clock divider 0) JTAG with the -H chip routinely. The Papilio DUO uses the FT2232H, which is great (high-speed USB, 480 Mb/s). The Pro uses the FT2232D (full-speed USB, 12 Mb/s). I don't have a Pro so I have no personal experience. I get 200 ms or so for the Papilio One 250K, which is within human reaction time. The 500K is more like 500 msec, which adds significant delay to compiling and loading a small design. This is with my Flavia software, so the compile step is less than a second for a small design. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jack Gassett Posted August 17, 2017 Report Share Posted August 17, 2017 I might look into doing another batch of Papilio One 250ks soon. But overall, I'm working on a new Papilio design that will replace the Papilio One and Papilio Pro boards with a single board called the Papilio Unity. This board will use much lower priced components and should get the price for a Spartan 6 based design hopefully down to the 250k pricing. It uses lower cost voltage regulators, the cp2104 USB to serial chip, and provides a socket for a memory upgrade. The trick with this board is that we don't need the expensive FTDI JTAG capable chip because we are making a boot loader, like the arduino has. Programming the SPI flash is much faster with this new board. It takes 20 seconds or so on existing boards and is 5 seconds on the new board. The design is working well and we are just getting everything in order before making the first batch. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
offroad Posted August 17, 2017 Report Share Posted August 17, 2017 17 minutes ago, johnbeetem said: The Pro uses the FT2232D (full-speed USB, 12 Mb/s). Thanks, you're right. I checked my board, it's D alright. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johnbeetem Posted August 17, 2017 Report Share Posted August 17, 2017 28 minutes ago, Jack Gassett said: I might look into doing another batch of Papilio One 250ks soon. But overall, I'm working on a new Papilio design that will replace the Papilio One and Papilio Pro boards with a single board called the Papilio Unity. This board will use much lower priced components and should get the price for a Spartan 6 based design hopefully down to the 250k pricing. It uses lower cost voltage regulators, the cp2104 USB to serial chip, and provides a socket for a memory upgrade. The trick with this board is that we don't need the expensive FTDI JTAG capable chip because we are making a boot loader, like the arduino has. Programming the SPI flash is much faster with this new board. It takes 20 seconds or so on existing boards and is 5 seconds on the new board. The design is working well and we are just getting everything in order before making the first batch. Thank you for the quick reply and the info on Papilio Unity. Will it have provision for JTAG, even if just an unpopulated header? When I'm developing for FPGAs I like to blast a bitstream directly into the FPGA rather than program an SPI flash. If the target board doesn't have an FT2232D/H, I use a US$15 Adafruit FT232H Breakout Board as a JTAG programmer. It's basically a single-channel FT2232H. I'll miss Spartan-3E/A. But they're on the way out and Spartan-6 is now the "sweet spot" last time I looked. Spartan-6 is a very complex architecture which makes life extra difficult for the new user. Fortunately there's the Lattice iCE40 if you want a simple, easy-to-understand architecture :-) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jack Gassett Posted August 17, 2017 Report Share Posted August 17, 2017 Thank you for the quick reply and the info on Papilio Unity. Will it have provision for JTAG, even if just an unpopulated header? When I'm developing for FPGAs I like to blast a bitstream directly into the FPGA rather than program an SPI flash. If the target board doesn't have an FT2232D/H, I use a US$15 Adafruit FT232H Breakout Board as a JTAG programmer. It's basically a single-channel FT2232H. I'll miss Spartan-3E/A. But they're on the way out and Spartan-6 is now the "sweet spot" last time I looked. Spartan-6 is a very complex architecture which makes life extra difficult for the new user. Fortunately there's the Lattice iCE40 if you want a simple, easy-to-understand architecture :-) Yes, it will have the jtag header which will be totally open for an external jtag programmer. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
offroad Posted August 17, 2017 Report Share Posted August 17, 2017 5 hours ago, johnbeetem said: Spartan-6 is a very complex architecture which makes life extra difficult for the new user. Well, but you are looking at FPGA design from a fairly unusual viewpoint :-) Thinking pragmatically, an Artix-7 would make a new user's life considerably easier over Spartan 6 simply because it comes with Vivado instead of ISE. I don't think the user needs to know anything about the internal architecture - click the green arrow and out comes a bitstream. Of course this approach will hit some wall eventually, but at a surprisingly high level, possibly into the realm of VGA pixel clocks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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