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Frequently Asked Questions / Hardware
How do I format CompactFlash cards for use with the SystemACE controller?
The SystemACE controller can only use CompactFlash cards formatted as FAT12 or FAT16 drives. Starting with XP, Windows will only format drives as FAT32 or NTFS. Instead, you can use an open-source command line tool, mkdosfs, to format cards.
- Download mkdosfs.zip. You can read more about mkdosfs and download the source from the author's site.
- Unzip the program, open a Windows command prompt and change to the mkdosfs directory.
- Mount your CompactFlash card and look for the drive letter Windows assigns it in My Computer.
- Run the following command, replacing "X" with the drive letter of your CompactFlash card:
mkdosfs -v -F 16 X:
I'm not getting any serial port interaction.
There are several problems that could cause this:
- Incorrect cable type (this is most common): the WARP FPGA board's RS-232 interface is configured exactly like a PC. In order to connect it directly to another PC, you need a null modem cable or adapter (i.e. one which cross the Tx and Rx signals).
- A system with a different hardware configuration has been redownloaded to WARP. In rare cases, the program running in the FPGA's PowerPC can lock up if a new system has been downloaded that has a different hardware configuration. The solution to this is to simply power cycle the board; be sure to leave the board off for a few seconds to allow the capacitors to discharge.
The serial port only shows random characters.
Make sure the Baud Rate set in Tera Term Pro is the same as that in the XPS project. To check the Baud Rate in a XPS project is go to System Assembly View -> Right-click "RS232" -> Configure IP. If you do change the Baud Rate in XPS the bitstream will have to be regenerated. Avoid using a Baud Rate of 115200 as it is known to give problems when interacting with the PC.
