Vivado does not launch with Windows 10 Fall Creators Update

There's a work-around available from Xilinx AR 69908. Windows 10 Fall Creators Update is not officially supported for Vivado 17.3 or 17.3.1.

Downloading an ISO for Visual Studio 2017

Note to Self

There isn't an ISO image download for VS 2017, you download the web installer, then pass it the commands to construct a disk layout for you. Here's the location of instructions to do so:

    Create an offline installer for Visual Studio 2017

That page includes instructions for:

• Creating an offline installation layout.
• Installing from an offline installation layout (may not be necessary, see the comments on this instruction).
• Customizing the offline installer.
• Updating the offline installer.
• Troubleshooting.

And here's the command line I use:

    vs_Community.exe --layout c:\vs2017-community-en-US-offline --lang en-US

MMU section translation fault

While working on a ZedBoard (perhaps also MicroZed and others) you may find yourself facing a message referring to MMU section translation fault. This has happened to me a couple times. In my experience it's because I'm attempting to launch a bare metal application to the PS while the board has already booted to Linux--so the MMU is likely already in use. My solution:

• Remove the Linux SD card (from which the board is booting) from the slot and reset the board
• Program the PL (FPGA) again
• Launch your bare metal application again.

Atmel Studio 7 incompatibility with Visual Studio 2015 Update 1

I spent a bit of time baffled after installing Atmel Studio 7.0.634 as I couldn't even create a new project successfully. This appears to be an incompatibility with Visual Studio 2015 Update 1. I found an apparent solution to the issue here, which manages to get me past my issues with creating a project. I'm not exactly sure why Atmel Studio has so many binding redirects, but there it is.

Sample error message: The 'ErrorListPackage' package did not load correctly.

ZedBoard button bit assignments

Future self,

Here are the bit assignments for the five momentary switches on the ZedBoard, as found by experimentation, for your future reference should you ever wish to use them w/GPIO again:

#define BUTTON_CENTER 0x01
#define BUTTON_DOWN   0x02
#define BUTTON_LEFT   0x04
#define BUTTON_RIGHT  0x08
#define BUTTON_UP     0x10