[time-nuts] DMTD mixer question

[Hal Murray]

> >>At least a couple of us have the Spartan 3E board.
> > Is the ISE evaluation software time limited?
> No, but there isn't any support and it doesn't work on the big/
> expensive  chips. 

I got confused and/or that's misleading.  Let me try again.

Xilinx has 2 basic software packages: ISE and Webpack.

Webpack is a subset of ISE.  It's free.  You can pull a copy off the web.  
There is no support and it doesn't handle the high end chips.

ISE is $.  There is an evaluation package shipped with every demo/evaluation 
board.  That is time limited.  If you purchase a copy, you get support for a 
year.  After that, for an annual fee you get support and updates.

If you don't pay for support/updates, the software keeps working.  At least 
it did several/many years ago when I last when through that dance.  I doubt 
if that has changed but YMMV.  (I assumed that the idea was that you should 
be able to archive the PC you used to work on a system and it would work if 
you turned it on after a few years to make a minor change.)


Webpack is good enough to get a lot of work done.  You might want some of the 
fancier features.  You probably don't want to pay for ISE if all you are 
doing is hobby stuff.


-- 
These are my opinions, not necessarily my employer's.  I hate spam.