machinegods.com

So, i've had this Spartan 3E kit for a few months now, and really haven't managed to do much with it.
I got it and ran smack into a problem that seems to plague people that run Vista 64bit with the Xilinx ISE WebPack (11.1).
The USB cable isn't recognized by Impact, and so the device can't be programmed in the most direct manner.

I had already tried updating the USB driver for the device from the full ISE installation, but that wasn't enough.

I finally stumbled across this thread, which had the answer:
http://forums.xilinx.com/xlnx/board/message?board.id=XLNXBRD&thread.id=693

The fix was:
- Installed the ISE WebPack
- Installed Cable Drivers from the full ISE installation (/bin/nt64 directory) - these can be downloaded separately as well
- Downloaded and install the full Impact Tools - this is referred to as "Stand Alone Programming Tools" on the Xilinx site

The poster notes that he reinstalled the cable drivers. I did not have to do that.

It should also be noted that you then have to use the separate install of Impact to program the device. I haven't figured out how to point the web pack to the stand alone installation.

All of the downloads can be found here:
http://www.xilinx.com/support/download/index.htm

Click on the "Login to start Downloading link, and get through the screens till you see the download selection screen. Again, note that the full version of Impact is the "Stand Alone Programming Tools" download.

The 64bit USB drivers can be found in either the full ISE download (6GB), or downloaded separately.
USB Cable installation is documented here:
http://www.xilinx.com/support/documentation/configuration_hardware.htm

A little ways down the page you should see the USB Cable Installation Guide, which points to this PDF:
http://www.xilinx.com/support/documentation/user_guides/ug344.pdf

And right below that is the driver download in the zip file ug344_windows.zip:
https://secure.xilinx.com/webreg/clickthrough.do?cid=100840&license=RefD...

To do the installation, you're supposed to run the install_xusb.bat file.
Mine didn't work.. in hindsite i think i ran it from the zip file instead of extracting it first.
I ended up issuing the two key commands from inside the batch file manually to do the installation - cd to the NT64 folder first.
(all the batch file does is detect whether it's 32bit or 64bit OS and register the right inf file).

wdreg -inf uninstall.inf -silent -log uninstall.log uninstall
wdreg -inf xusbdrvr.inf -log install_xusb.log install

Once i got the webpack, the USB drivers, and the stand alone Impact tools installed, I fired up ISE, and created the programming file.
Then I powered on the board, launched the stand alone Impact tools, created a project, and did the Cable Auto-Configure under the . It correctly detected the three devices, and i was able to right click the first, select program, and send the bit file ISE created down to it.

What a pain...... but it works!