Once upon a time, XILINX sold a flying lead adapter, i.e. one that plugged into a parallel port, and had separate wires for the four active signals that they use, in addition to power and gnd. Several individuals sold copies of these at a small fraction of the price XILINX asked, and I bought one of those, though I did have several different JTAG adapters that accompanied various boards with which they worked. The flying lead adapter works fine, so long as one has a parallel port available. I can't speak for their USB-based adapters, since I use the older FPGA's and CPLD's most of the time. XILINX still supports the parallel-port-based programming cables, and I find them quite useful even today. The XC9572XL is among those with which these adapters work.

I've found that some of the older XC9500-series CPLD's require old software in order to program them, as their internal ID codes differ from what the newer software expects.

The conclusion I've reached, as relates to Mahmood's problem, is that if he can hook up the wires, a flying lead version based on the USB adapter should work as well, though it might involve less effort if he simply routes the wires to the terminals on the target board that expects to "see" them. They are, after all, just wires with single-pin connectors. It's worth noting that XILINX still supports these flying-lead adapters, and it might take an experienced technician as much as 10 minutes to fabricate one, provided he has the parts.

RE