The Arduino as a simple JTAG adapter

cpld

pesco blogged about his free  XC95144XL CPLD breakout board PCB build:

A good while ago I won one of the free PCBs regularly given away by DIY hardware shop Dangerous Prototypes. My board of choice was a CPLD breakout board, for the Xilinx XC9572XL. CPLDs are the smaller brother of FPGAs: programmable logic chips that can be made to act as any integrated circuit within the device’s limits. The XC9572XL is programmed via a standard JTAG interface. I did not have anything that speaks JTAG so went looking if my Arduino can be turned into an appropriate programmer. The solution that I found, however, did not work; so I built my own.

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  1. BTW, as is visible in the picture, I used ceramic capacitors for the voltage regulator. Its data sheet didn’t really say it needed tantalum… and it seems to be working fine. Not sure if there’s a downside that I don’t know of — I’m a total amateur when it comes to the electrical side of things.

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