Use USB-A connector (J5) on ML605 eval. kit as USB host for flash drive

[brad.skillman]

Hi,

We currently have a Virtex-6 ML605 evaluation kit and we would like to have the MicroBlaze soft processor to communicate with the Cypress CY7C67300 and use the full size USB-A connector (J5) to implement a USB host capability that would  interact with a USB flash drive that has been formatted with FAT16 or FAT32.  However, the built-in test software (BIST) that came with the ML605 does not appear to have any example code or IP cores that would provide this capability.

Does Xilinx (or any supported Xilinx partner) provide any free IP cores and/or firmware that would run on the Virtex-6 VLX240T device and could be used to provide basic USB hosting capability and allow basic FAT16/FAT32 file handling commands (e.g. directory, open/close file, read/write file, etc.) to a USB-based flash drive?

Any help would be appreciated.

Sincerely,

Brad S.

[mahesh1359]

Xilinx (or any supported Xilinx partner) does not  provide any free IP cores and/or firmware that would run on the Virtex-6 VLX240T device and could be used to provide basic USB hosting capability and allow basic FAT16/FAT32 file handling commands (e.g. directory, open/close file, read/write file, etc.) to a USB-based flash drive.

Please note that the System ACE CF controller in ML605 does not recognize the FAT32 file system; it was designed to recognize the FAT12 or FAT16 formats. 

The "mkdosfs" formatting utility has been successfully used to correctly re-format the CF card for use with the SystemACE CF controller when using a Windows XP machine. This freeware is available for download at: 

http://www1.mager.org/mkdosfs/
 

Use the default "mkdosfs" command to format the CF card. 

For example: 

c:\> mkdosfs D:  

The default "mkdosfs" command automatically formats the CF card in either FAT12 or FAT16 format, with at least two sectors-per-cluster, and only one reserved sector.

[brad.skillman · Accepted solution]

Thanks for the reply mahesh1359.

Using the FAT 16 file system will work fine for our application.  I was planning on using a MicroBlaze-based system that will use the SystemACE CF controller to read data from the CF card into the SDRAM to processing by the FPGA.

Thank you for the reference on the mkdosfs freeware.  This utility could come in handy is I ever need to get another CF card ready for use with the ML605.

Thanks for your help.

- Brad.