New features and enhancements

Please see the Change Log for a list of new features and enhancements in XJTAG 3.5.

Network licensing

If you’re using network licensing, then this version of XJTAG requires an upgrade to the licence server. Please contact XJTAG Support to obtain an updated version for your organisation.

Opening projects containing errors in XJRunner Integration

Previous versions of the XJRunner Integration would not report any errors in a project when opening it, but would throw an exception when you came to try and run an XJEase function. This behaviour has now changed: an exception will now be thrown when creating a new Project instance if the project contains errors. The impact of this change should be low, since typically users are opening projects from XJPack files, and XJTAG generally will not create an XJPack file if the project contains errors.

XJEase concatenation operator

Previous versions of XJEase had a bug when concatenating constant values. Any leading zeroes in the resulting expression would be removed if both operands were constant, meaning slightly different results would be obtained depending on whether the operands were constant or not. This has now been fixed, so that leading zeroes are always retained.

Example

INT x := 0;
INT y WIDTH 4 := 1;
CONST INT constY WIDTH 4 := 1;
INT constantResult, variableResult;

constantResult := 0[3..0] : constY;
variableResult := x[3..0] : y;

PRINT("Constant result: 0b", BIN(constantResult), " WIDTH=", WIDTHOF(constantResult), "\n");
PRINT("Variable result: 0b", BIN(variableResult), " WIDTH=", WIDTHOF(variableResult), "\n");

This code would have produced the following output in previous versions. The extra zeroes that pad the result have been lost when both operands are constants:

Constant result: 0b1 WIDTH=1
Variable result: 0b00000001 WIDTH=8

But now the code produces the same result for both the values:

Constant result: 0b00000001 WIDTH=8
Variable result: 0b00000001 WIDTH=8

STRTOINT function in XJEase

In previous versions of XJEase if you passed a string to STRTOINT that could not be parsed as an integer, the function returned zero. From v3.5 onwards a runtime error now occurs and code execution stops.

FREAD function in XJEase

The FREAD function in XJEase was deprecated in XJTAG v1.2 and since has caused a warning to be displayed if used. As of this release, support has been removed entirely.

Old style TEST COVERAGE in device files

Very old device files may describe their test coverage using an older syntax that was deprecated in XJTAG v1.3. Support for this syntax has now been removed. This will only affect very old projects; no project created inside any version of XJDeveloper will contain such syntax.

Removed assumptions about the state of JTAG devices after reset sequences

Previous versions made assumptions about the state of JTAG devices’ instructions when completing the reset sequence. Now these assumptions have been removed, it may cause projects to fail when performing the first JTAG access. This will only impact some projects that call SET to read or write bus values during the test reset sequence and then do not then call a TMS Reset. If your project has stopped working, please contact XJTAG Support.

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 on both the 32 and 64 bit variants of the following operating systems: Windows Vista^® Service Pack 1 or 2, Windows 7^® Service Pack 1, Windows 8^®, Windows 8.1^® and Windows 10^®. 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 XP was dropped in v3.4.

XJTAG recommends a screen resolution of at least 1024×768.

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

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 2.5.x along side any variant of version 2.6.y; however it is not possible to install two variants of version 2.5, e.g. 2.5.6 and 2.5.7.

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.

Consequences: 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) that comes with XJTAG 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

3.4 | 3.3 | 3.2 | 3.1 | 3.0 | 2.7 | 2.6 | 2.5 | 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.