Anyone else finding XTAG2 unreliable?

[Redeye]

I'm using the XTAG2 on OSX Lion with AVB demo boards on v11.11 tools and it's driving me mad. Often XDE can't find it, then it does find it and says another process is using it, then sometimes XDE hangs while trying to find it and starts melting my Macbook while I try to force it to quit. It just takes forever to get anything done with it - I spend more time waiting for the XTAG2 to do stuff than I do writing code, which isn't the most productive way to work.

Is anyone else having similar problems?

[rp181]

The general impression i've gotten is that OSX isn't as well supported. I haven't had any of those issues on Windows 7, except occasionally the "used by another process" problem. However, running it again always fixes that problem.

[data]

I'm using the XTAG2 on OSX Lion with AVB demo boards on v11.11 tools and it's driving me mad. Often XDE can't find it, then it does find it and says another process is using it, then sometimes XDE hangs while trying to find it and starts melting my Macbook while I try to force it to quit. It just takes forever to get anything done with it - I spend more time waiting for the XTAG2 to do stuff than I do writing code, which isn't the most productive way to work.

Is anyone else having similar problems?

I'm on Snow Leopard, and I find that the XTAG-2 is not always recognized just after being plugged in. Once the computer 'latches on', things generally go well until there's a power-cycle of the XTAG-2.

I normally plug in the XTAG-2, and run xrun -l from the command line. If the device isn't detected, I unplug it, plug it back in, and rerun xrun -l. It occasionally takes 3-4 cycles, but it always keeps working after that. I also find that the XTAG-2 is a little more reluctant to start if the DUT it's connected to is powered on.

The XDE equivalent of xrun -l is to go to the Debug Configurations dialog and click the refresh button next to the list of available devices.

On XDE 11.2.x and previous, I found that if I ran a debug session without cancelling the old one, XDE would sometimes fail to cancel the old one and get into a hung state, requiring XDE to be restarted. This doesn't seem to happen so much with XDE 11.11.x, but I still stop the old session manually before starting a new one.

Other than this, OS X has never caused me the severe problems you describe, but perhaps it's an issue with Lion. It could also be problems with libusb, which, as useful as it is, is not the most stable of structures.

I have had major problems working on Windows 7, which is one reason I moved to OS X. I have found OS X to be a much more stable working platform in general. That said, I do think bad PC hardware and/or drivers are probably to blame more than Windows itself. For example, my boss's laptop, a ThinkPad, is unable to see the XTAG2 at all, no matter what we do, but it's also unable to detect many other USB devices.

[JohnWilson]

I've been having the exact same problems on Win7 (x64). My solution is never to remove power from the XTAG2, ever. When XDE gets gronked (Resume/Suspend buttons *both* faded out so I have to Alt-F4 out) and gives the "Another process is using the XTAG2" error when I restart XDE, I have to reboot Windows to clear the problem. I know none of this helps but, it's not just you and it's not just MacOS! I figure with $19 worth of HW and $0 of SW, working 90% of the time is good enough, but it IS annoying.

John Wilson
D Bit

[cyborgx1]

Do you use a cable to connect the XTAG2 to your computer?
If yes, the cable might be the reason, we had problems with the XTAG2 too, then we bought a good usb cable and the problems stopped, well sometimes there are problems but they appear really rarely.

;-)

[data]

I figure with $19 worth of HW and $0 of SW, working 90% of the time is good enough, but it IS annoying.

Indeed it is. But to be fair, the XTAG setup works about as well as 90% of the JTAG chains I've ever worked with. Two of them, which I shall not name here, cost over US$2k and were both considerably less reliable than the $19 XTAG-2.

The only JTAG adapter I know of that really seems to work well all the time is the Segger J-Link. Worth every penny.

That said -- would be wonderful if these problems were fixed one day. Ditch libusb, for a start. Or maybe just ditch USB completely. Ethernet XTAG, anyone? ;)