Hi Sasha -

Xilinx has promised to help us with this. If they do, I'll share any useful information here. But XSVF Executor may be just what we've been looking for. I'll turn it over to someone who speaks C. Thanks for making me aware of this.

FYI - The latest version of Impact outputs XSVF files without needing to convert SVF to XSVF with a separate utility. My particular XSVF file is approximately 7.5K. Since my processor, an Analog Devices ADuC841, has 62K of ROM, and I'm only using 15K so far, there should be enough room to store both the XSVF data and XSVF Executor as well, even though both only need to be used once. That way there will only be one file needed to program the uP. The main application can look at power-up for a flag that tells it whether the CPLD has been programmed yet, or there can be a special command to program it.

I wrote a simple program that converts XSVF files to a series of DB statements for inclusion in the assembly source. Your method of streaming the XSVF data through the serial port is more elegant, but I've got so much ROM left that this makes more sense to me.

I didn't use a latch to isolate the CPLD once it's programmed. The four I/O pins that are connected to the JTAG pins on the CPLD will be used for other functions once the CPLD is programmed. There isn't much activity on those pins in normal use, so I assumed that it would be very unlikely that the CPLD programming could be affected, considering how involved the programming protocol is. I haven't seen any evidence that the program has been corrupted yet anyway.