New features and enhancements

Please see the Change Log for a list of new features and enhancements in XJTAG 2.5.

Layout Viewer

XJTAG now includes an integrated layout viewer. The viewer currently supports only ODB++ projects. To enable the layout viewer functionality, an ODB++ project must be selected as the netlist for one or more boards in your project.

Once enabled, wherever an object is represented in the XJDeveloper user interface, it should be possible to navigate to view it in either the Layout Viewer or in the Netlist Explorer. In addition, the Connection Test output has been enhanced so that nets are hyperlinks that will navigate to display that net or nets, enabling faults to be identified more quickly.

Device Categorisation

Previous versions of XJTAG required that all accessible devices be categorised in some way before any tests could be run on a board. This requirement has now been relaxed, and XJTAG will ignore any device that has not been categorised when running the connection test. Be aware, however, that any net attached to such an uncategorised device will not be tested at all; ultimately any such device will need to be categorised at some point.

This change allows a project to be developed in a more incremental and iterative fashion, and gives the user much earlier feedback on any issues. While there are such uncategorised devices, two warnings are displayed:

• at the top of the DFT screen so that the user is aware that test coverage statistics can be improved; and
• when the Connection Test is run so the user is aware that there are accessible nets that are not currently being tested.

Test Summary

At the end of testing, XJRunner and XJDeveloper now display a summary table of what tests have run and their status. This can be disabled in the XJRunner Setup.

RUNSVF and RUNSTAPL commands

In previous versions of XJTAG there was some inconsistency in the way errors were returned from the RUNSVF and RUNSTAPL functions; some errors caused a non-zero return code, others printed an error and aborted execution. Some changes have been made to make most errors return a non-zero exit code and to document more clearly what these are.

Command line DFT utility

The command-line DFT utility has now been removed. Its functionality and much more is available on the DFT screen in XJDeveloper.

Maintenance Licensing

With XJTAG 2.4.9, the system now checks the maintenance status of the XJLink, and will not allow XJTAG releases available after maintenance has expired to run.

Supported Platforms

XJTAG is supported under Windows XP^® (service pack 3 or higher), Windows Vista^® (both 32 bit and 64 bit) and Windows 7^® (both 32 bit and 64 bit). Please upgrade to one of these operating systems before attempting to install XJTAG, and then apply the latest Service Pack for your operating System. Service Packs are available from the Microsoft Support website.

Support for Windows 2000 was dropped in version 2.4 of XJTAG.

Target Hardware

In order for XJTAG to interact with a circuit, the JTAG chain must be set up properly. To help with this, we have a produced a set of DFT guidelines. There is also a troubleshooting section in the help files.

Side-by-side installations

The facility to have multiple versions of XJTAG installed on a single PC was added in version 1.3.1. The earliest version of XJTAG that can be installed alongside version 1.3.1, or later, is version 1.2.

It is only possible to have one instance of each major release of XJTAG installed. It is possible, for example, to install any variant of version 2.0.x.x along side any variant of version 2.1.x.x; however it is not possible to install two variants of version 2.0.x.x, 2.1.x.x, etc.

In order to allow users of the XJRunner COM interface to upgrade XJTAG without having to recompile their applications, the GUID for this component of XJTAG does not change with each major version of XJTAG.

Therefore, to use the XJIntegration COM object in side-by-side installations the correct version of the library must be selected when switching between versions. The Version Checker utility (XJVersion) allows the registered version of the XJIntegration to be switched between installed versions.

Changing Project File Associations

By default, double-clicking on an XJTAG project file of any kind will open it in the most recently installed version of XJTAG. The Version Check utility (XJVersion) can be used to control these file associations. It is recommended to do this using the copy installed with the latest version of XJTAG that you have installed.

Previous versions

2.4 | 2.3 | 2.2 | 2.1 | 2.0 | 1.4

We welcome any suggestions for improving our products. Please contact us with any comments you may have and we will look into incorporating your ideas into a future version.