A new version of XJTAG – version 4.2 – has been released, containing updates and new features. It is now available from our website for users who are in maintenance.

Main Features

This article summarises the main features in XJTAG 4.2. Blog articles with more details on these features, and some of the many other enhancements, will follow over the coming weeks.

Support for XJLink-PF20

XJTAG applications now have support for the new XJLink-PF20, which is a 4-TAP JTAG controller with 2 voltage domains (compared to the XJLink-PF40 with 8 TAPs/4 domains). The XJLink-PF20 uses similar pin mappings to XJLink-PF40. Projects in XJDeveloper/XJRunner can contain pin mappings for any or all of XJLink-PF40, XJLink-PF20 and XJLink2-series devices and the system will determine which one to use at runtime based on the type(s) of XJLink plugged into the PC. XJDeveloper continues to provide assistance for converting pin mapping between XJLink types.

New values for Constant Pins

Constant Pins and Disable values in XJEase device files have been extended. The value “Input” in previous versions of XJTAG is now called “Excluded” to more clearly reflect the effect of setting the value on a pin during the connection test. The new values are “IsHigh”, “IsLow” and “IsDriven” all indicate that something other than XJTAG is driving the pin, and so all of these values instruct Connection Test not to drive nets with such pins on – however the connection test will still read these nets where possible, checking that IsHigh pins are always high, IsLow pins are always low, and checking IsDriven nets for shorts to other nets.

Pin Restrictions

This feature allows users to easily remove XJTAG’s ability to use some or all of the functionality of specific JTAG device pins, without resorting to editing the BSDL file. This can be used to prevent JTAG pins driving on a net which is part of multiple voltage domains, or can be used to work around differences between the behaviour described by the BSDL file and the physical behaviour of the JTAG device.

XJPack File Preferred XJTAG version

Setting a preferred version will mean that XJTAG issues a warning if you run tests in a different version to that intended by the creator of the test project.

BGA Pins on Manual Devices

Manual Devices (those which are not in the netlist) can now be created with BGA pin notation rather than just numbered pins.

Other features

A large number of smaller improvements are part of XJTAG 4.2. These smaller improvements aim to help improve ease of project setup and include the addition of a Suggestions Wizard to the Categorise Devices screen.