The previous article walked through the steps to program the Mimas A7 FPGA Development board using OpenOCD and XC3SProg in Windows. Similarly, this article will walk you through the steps to program Mimas A7 in Linux using OpenOCD and XC3SProg. This article uses Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Linux distribution as an example, but any other Linux distribution should also work just fine.
Programming Mimas A7 using OpenOCD in Linux
Step 1: Downloading and installing OpenOCD
Run the following command in the terminal to download and install OpenOCD in the system:
sudo apt-get install openocd
Step 2: Downloading and adding Mimas A7 configuration file
Download Mimas A7 configuration file numato_mimasa7.cfg from here and save the file to “/usr/share/openocd/scripts/board/” directory.
Step 3: Programming Mimas A7 using OpenOCD
Connect Mimas A7 FPGA Development Board to the Linux system using a USB Type-B cable. Run the following command in the terminal. Replace <bitstream_file_path> with the actual .bit file path that is to be programmed to the board.
openocd -f board/numato_mimasa7.cfg -c "init" -c "pld load 0 <bitstream_file_path>" -c "shutdown"
And that’s it, the Mimas A7 board should now be programmed with the bitstream using OpenOCD, without the need for any external JTAG hardware.
Programming Mimas A7 using XC3SProg in Linux
Step 1: Downloading and installing XC3SProg
Run the following command in the terminal to download and install XC3SProg in the system:
sudo apt-get install xc3sprog
Step 2: Downloading XC3SProg files for Mimas A7
Download XC3SProg files for Mimas A7 from here, and change directory (using cd) to the downloaded folder in the terminal.
Step 3: Programming Mimas A7 using XC3SProg
Connect Mimas A7 FPGA Development Board to the Linux system using a USB Type-B cable. Run the following command in the terminal. Replace <bitstream_file_path> with the actual .bit file path that is to be programmed to the board.
xc3sprog -c mimas_a7 <bitstream_file_path>
And that’s it, the Mimas A7 board should now be programmed with the bitstream using XC3SProg, without the need for any external JTAG hardware.