You told me to contact Seeed Studio for a refund and to link to here. That's exactly what I did. If they are on the manufacturing end then they share a responsibility for quality control and my criticism is well placed.
I'll be contacting them again since I haven't heard back.
And to answer another post, things like this should be made public. There are other posts about quality control, one person even had to rework a board with a hot airgun, and the lack of centralized information.
Thank you Ian. I emailed them early yesterday morning, have not heard from them yet. I understand it could take a few days. Here's what was sent to include the order number and itemized items in the email they sent when I purchased the items: (edit- and I did link to here)
Hello,
Ian from Dangerous Prototypes sent me here. When I got around to using your product for using CPLDs as glue logic for small FPGA clusters, after wasting +10 hours trying to even read the board the Bus Blaster V2.5 is obviously defective. This is my first time dealing with Dangerous Prototypes or Seed Studio and my confidence with these 2 companies is rather shaken at this point. I would like to get a refund and take my business elsewhere for programmers. I don't know how well these are being tested but even the self test errors are not consistent which could be a sign of a bad solder joint. Reading through the Dangerous Prototypes forum, I notice other people have had problems with solder joints in the past.
I need to do rapid prototyping, which is why I use the Xess FPGAs boards, and it's obvious that I need something of higher quality for CPLD programming without worrying about if the programmer is going to be reliable or not. Time is money and my time has been burned by you product.
I do, however, like the form factor of the CPLD boards, their self test worked and will likely get more of them assuming they don't also have bad solder joints when I can actually test them. Ian has been quite courteous and professional.
So, should I just give this link to Seeed Studio and discuss getting another board or refund? I'm rather frustrated but do appreciate you trying to help me. There's a dedicated Xilinx JTAG programmer for $100 I'll probably get and have had no problems with Xess FPGAs boards which don't require a programmer. The CPLD boards, which I plan on buying more of, is for glue logic for a small FPGA cluster.
Well, I've spent over 6 hours following every thing just trying to read the programmer and a CPLD board. Self tests gives either 5, 11, 12 or 13 errors.
Right now I get nothing but errors with urJTAG trying to "detect" after typing "cable ft2232 interface=1" I get these flush errors. "bsdl path c:/bsdl" gives a detect of "TDO seems to be stuck at ". "svf c:/svf/bbv2.svf" actually worked one time.
Connected to libftd2xx driver isn't a problem.
With a CPLD wired in to the programmer, cable jtagkey then detect gives no response as does bsdl path c:bsdl for detect. And yes, I've been careful which way the / goes.
So, do you guys honor warranties? I like the little CPLD boards, which runs the code already on them, but after this first experience with your company I think I'll look else where for a JTAG programmer. I'll even pay for shipping.
I'd like to get some help if I could please. I bought a Bus Blaster and 2 CPLD boards. I'd like to get some more products but having some reservations now because there's information all over the place. Windows 7, EeePC using UrTAG, jumper on jmp 4 with the Bus Blaster.
me: cable ft2232 interface=1
jtag> connected to libftd2xx driver.
me: detect
Warning: TDO seems to be stuck at 0
me: svf c:/svf/bbv2/svf
Error svf: chain without any parts
As mentioned, the information you guys provide is rather convoluted and all over the place to include a dead link. Is there a quick fix for this? I'm sure I'm just making a small mistake somewhere. The jumpers on the jtag were set as linked somewhere which I now can't find because your information is all over the place (and wasting my time, honestly and I don't intend to be rude, there's really no excuse for this if you guys are selling a development tool). I get a proper test voltage on p19. Am I supposed to take this pin or any other to ground?
