Xilinx par III cable what a joke!

i lost a day ..trying to figure it out
i don't understand how a serious company like XILINX can advice the use of such a weak designed cable with their latest VIRTEX II pro products
The problem arises from the fact that the cable is powered by the VIRTEX target .. this power in some boards is less than 3 V . .In my case was 2.5 V .. So this violates entierly all the specs of the ECP parallel port ..

From there all communication behavior is completly aleatory ...
I was using my laptop ..and i manage to download 2 times .. Then i thought i fried something .. THE XILINX BOARD ! ... 4 hours later i discover that was ok ( Ouff!!) /... one our later i verified that the cable 3 electronics was also ok ///NO IT CAN"T BE my $2000 sony LAPTOP !!!

well if i use the printer .. it works FINE ... SO the CABLE III + LAPTOP + XILINX eval board is THE PROBLEM ...

i wonder if i can buy a USB -> PARALLEL cable that is 100% compitble with the ECP mode required by the cable III .. that's my best SOLUTION ,because it only costs $20 .. a new IV CABLE is $100 ...

Anybody has gone trough all this CABLE NONSENSE with the VIRTEX IIPRO ???.. By the way the cable works well in my other COMPUTER ...Yes the BULKY ONE the one i was planning to THROW AWAY!!!

I advice you complain to Xilinx. It does sound really crappy.

On the other hand, laptop parallel ports are not that good (3.3V, not 5V). Did you try to change the BIOS setting on your laptop? I had problems with that earlier on.

And by the way, TTL input Logic is considered high at 2.0V


ASIC

Only way you will do low voltage is to buy the Cable IV. . .

Git