Looking for Xilinx Foundation 2.1i, 3.1i software.

[NorthernWing]

Back again, the title pretty much says it all... I've checked everywhere, and am digging through old Prentice Hall ISBNs looking for disks at this point.

Does anyone around here have/know where to find a copy of either Xilinx Foundation 2.1i or 3.1i (notISE)?  Any version... base, express, student, anything.  Hell I'd throw my wallet at someone if they had the original media at this point.

Closest I've gotten my hands on is ISE 3.3i, but that's too new for device support; I've recently inherited several cases/several hundred XC3000A-series chips that I'd like to use for some personal projects, but turning up software from the 90s is unsurprisingly difficult.

[marcopolo]

Or maybe XAct 5.2.1

http://marc.retronik.fr/tmp-mj/Products_supported_by_various_versions_of_Xilinx_software.htm

The software is one thing but the license is another and that's where the problems start.

Marc

[NorthernWing]

Yep, the license sounds like it's going to be my issue... my understanding is that XAct and the first versions of Alliance/Foundation used a parallel dongle key but the later versions used a software license locked to the system's HDD serial number.  Could be completely wrong about that though.  I figure I can probably get a software license to work, but there isn't much I can do about a hardware key, which is why I left XAct off the list.  Not sure about Foundation 1.5/1.5i.

IIRC Alliance didn't come with a frontend and so I'd rather not go hunting down whatever design entry tools were used at the time ontop of that.

[marcopolo]

I sent you a MP.

[NorthernWing]

Got it, much appreciated - I'll try to get it loaded and running on the old 486DX machine when I leave work today.

I also found and ordered an ancient copy of Wakerly's Digital Design: Principles and Practices (2nd Edition), which if it really is 'new' as described, should come with a Xilinx Foundation 1.5 Student Edition disc - it sounds like this should be good for the entire XC3000A series according to this old archived page.  I'll keep everyone posted if it shows up.

[NorthernWing]

Unfortunately I forgot that I repurposed my ATX->AT power supply adapter, so I'm waiting for another one to show up right now so I can start up the old 486 PC.

Until then, Foundation 1.5 appears to be running fine under Win95 on 86box, but the experience is awful.

[Beta_vulgaris]

XACT 5.0.0, Foundation 3.1i, found at http://forum.old-dos.ru/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1276&p=16202
Looking forward for XACTstep for Windows 3.x, also Altera/Actel/Atmel tools.

[Frozen001]

So the links above are those functional, as in will they be usable if I install them on to an older PC I have, and will I be able to program devices via parallel port JTAG?

[marcopolo]

Try it and tell us 

[Frozen001]

so the above link for 3.1, actually is adobe reader, unless I did not use the correct link

[free_electron]

you probably will need the black hardware dongle... it's not a flexlm dongle.

even then the xc3 needs the special serial proms from xilinx to store the bitstream... 00. they are the old proms that cannot be replaced with 25cxxx series. one time programmable. require special programmer and costly as hell.

[langwadt]

you probably will need the black hardware dongle... it's not a flexlm dongle.

even then the xc3 needs the special serial proms from xilinx to store the bitstream... 00. they are the old proms that cannot be replaced with 25cxxx series. one time programmable. require special programmer and costly as hell.

you could also get jtag programmable flash for configuration from xilinx

and I've heard of some using a some serial flash that happened to have an 0xff read command

or you could use a cheap mcu

[Gerhard_dk4xp]

The usual early Xilinx dongle had an 8 bit counter whose
carry-out was read back to paper_empty. You had to
apply a certain number of clock pulses until PE got
active. The exact number said if you had only Futurenet?,
Design implementation or the simulator, too.
So easy that is was an insult to people who would probably
have a logic analyzer.

The software contained ugly hacks, like going back from
protected  to real mode a dozen of times per
second just to interrogate the real mode mouse driver.

I don't think this will work on a virtual machine.

You usually had a heap of Compaq-286s to run
multiple incarnations of apr to increase the odds of
having a routed chip the next morning that really worked.
That explains the need for extra dongles.

I would try to sell the XC3000. Their price soared to
unexpected heights when production finally stopped.

I think I still have an original dongle and most of the
stuff in my basement, including an XC2064 eval board.
Wow, the XC2064 had 64 FlipFlops. We never used it.
There must be also a Silos-Simulator. I used it mostly
for ECL logic I could not measure.

[nctnico]

I would try to sell the XC3000. Their price soared to
unexpected heights when production finally stopped.

That looks like very good advice to me! There are so many FPGAs out there that are supported by current software and don't need hardware dongles (and have workarounds for time limited licensing issues).

[Beta_vulgaris]

so the above link for 3.1, actually is adobe reader, unless I did not use the correct link

Open it with UltraISO, or mount it in VMWare for Windows 2000/XP guest. 7-zip did not correctly recognized it, I have tried just before.

[Beta_vulgaris]

Xilinx Foundation 3.1, from 2000, XC3000 / XC4000E support included.
https://archive.org/details/2000-xilinx-foundation-3-1
Also, Foundation 3.3 https://archive.org/details/2000-xilinx-foundation-3-3

[Beta_vulgaris]

Update: Patch for Viewlogic Workview included in DS290/DS390 ADDED.
https://archive.org/details/1994-xilinx-xact-500-rebuilt

That is, search Viewlogic Workview executables for 23 c0 74 09 56 57 ff d0, and change them to 23 c0 eb 09 56 57 ff d0 (only one occurrence per file), thus license checking is skipped.

[peter-h]

There are cracked versions of Viewlogic 4 / LCA and XACT 5 out there.

VL4/LCA was a Xilinx-special crippled version of VL4 (a £20k product back then) which would import only Xilinx component libs. There were a few things like a 74HC74... There was also a program called sneaky.exe which Xilinx wrote which IIRC patched the schematic file so the full version of VL4 could open it. I had that also but never found out how it worked, and never had the full VL4.

This dates to c. 1995-96. Both used its own dedicated dongle and these were patched by a Russian coder. The crack was done because later versions of Xilinx software would not import projects done with these, but when the dongles broke (they were flimsy parallel port ones) Xilinx refused to support the product, saying "no more dongles available".

The stuff worked only under DOS 6.2. It was never tested in a Windoze DOS box. For best results it needed an 8514-emulating video card; then you got a nice 1024x768 display.

I know these cracks escaped into the wild and the above posts may be the same thing.

There are also patching programs, dated 1998, for XACT 6. WOW - 24 years ago. We were all young then

PM me if you want to know more.

I dropped out of FPGA design consultancy c. 1997. Got sick of the vendor behaviour. It was OK if you were paid for your time, working for someone else, and didn't have to care whether the project could be maintained into the future. Also most FPGA projects can be done with a fast uC.

IIRC, Foundation came after VL4/XACT. The package (which I still have) supported XC2k, 3k and 4k).

[Beta_vulgaris]

EDA Collection: https://archive.org/details/@beta_vulgaris
Twitter: @Betavulgaris6
As the images below shown, nearly all versions since 1991 of Xilinx, 1997 of Altera is included. Toolchains for Actel/Quicklogic single-use FPGAs are still not found.

[KrudyZ]

Some people just can't throw away anything...

[Beta_vulgaris]

Some people just can't throw away anything...
(Attachment Link)

You can easily bypass the dongle checking by patching the executables. XACT 5.0/5.1/5.2/6.0 are based on "Phar Lap" DOS Extender, which is recognized by IDA Pro. Nearly all functions are 32-bit, so Hex-Rays Decompiler is useful.

[peter-h]

My recollection is that patching the dongles out of VL4 and XACT5 took somebody about 5 mins. They ran it under a debugger and single stepped it until the dongle code appeared.

These days, programmers go to a lot more trouble, e.g. not checking the dongle (well, the floating license, etc) until some seconds into the code, and they use code to detect if the executable is running under a debugger (it runs much slower, obviously).

I would not go back to FPGA work even if somebody gave me a box with 10,000 of the biggest X4000 device Xilinx ever made (which back then was $100s) Just too painful to use commercially. I would invest my life into learning how to use a fast microcontroller. You can now get ARM chips which run internally at > 400MHz. It was fun at the time though, drawing a circuit diagram and compiling it into an FPGA.

The people with a need for these old tools are those with products running which need some mods. You can still buy these old chips. Xilinx made it extremely hard to run FPGA products for a long time unless you were sure they would never need a re-visit. You basically had to archive the whole PC you worked on.

[Beta_vulgaris]

XACT 4.2.1 under annotations.

[pcprogrammer]

I would not go back to FPGA work even if somebody gave me a box with 10,000 of the biggest X4000 device Xilinx ever made (which back then was $100s) Just too painful to use commercially. I would invest my life into learning how to use a fast microcontroller. You can now get ARM chips which run internally at > 400MHz. It was fun at the time though, drawing a circuit diagram and compiling it into an FPGA.

Micro controllers are very powerful nowadays, but even with the core running at >400MHz outputting samples to a DAC or reading samples from an ADC at speeds over >100MHz still needs extra hardware, for which a FPGA is very usable. Sure not the old ones like the XC3000 or XC4000 series. The types with an ARM core embedded like the Xilinx zynq are very interesting where you have the benefits of both worlds.

[peter-h]

I agree; there still are FPGA applications at the edges, but these ~1995 tools won't support those devices, and the ones they do support can only be found on Ebay (Unless somebody gives you a big box of them)

Can you still buy the x4000 devices? The top end ones were quite powerful. I last looked at this when an old customer made an enquiry about 10 years ago and the x3064 was still just about available.

Digikey list the 4036, 4044 and 4062 which may be usable, and the 4085 which I doubt is.