Now I'm ****ed

I just need to rant for a moment while I deal with another of what I
consider to be a slap in the face.

I *paid* for the Lattice toolset which includes Synplicity and Active
HDL. Actually, I *paid* for Modelsim. But before they shipped it to
me, their agreement with Mentor expired and was replaced with the
Aldec arrangement. They shipped me the Modelsim software, they just
won't license it now.

I have had licensing issues ever since. I have to run the old version
to run synthesis and I have to run the new version to get simulation.
Ok, I can live with that in the short term as I need to work on my
code and not fixing the tool installation.

My design is not large, but it is a bit intricate. I have a test
fixture which I will use in production test as well as debug. The
test fixture contains an FPGA. Yesterday, to make my life a bit
easier, I combined my test bench with the file for the test fixture
FPGA to be the test bench for the application FPGA. This saves me
having to maintain two files that are nearly the same. So I have a
top level file with two files below. One of those two files
instantiates the rest of the FPGA design and the other is part of the
test bench.

Today Active HDL refuses to open the design file saying,

You do not have valid license to use workspace with more than one
design. Contact Aldec for ordering information


Criminy! What made the tool decide today that this was two designs?
I need to get work done and this thing is crapping on me again.

I have tried to work around it, but it keeps telling me the same
thing. It was perfectly happy yesterday when I created this test
bench. Anyone know what makes the tool think this is two designs?

Would I be having this same problem if I had the Modelsim license?

I swear, I will never go hungry again!... I mean, I'll never go
without open source tools again!

Rick

rickman

Your FAE should have told you that Lattice does generate Mentor
licenses until end
of April 2008. Apart from that Lattice newsletters have been sent to
the customers
again and again indicating the deadline for license generation. So it
is up to oneself
to be up to date ;o)

There are many things that make me feel ..ssed but I do not use it as
topic in a
newsgroup.

Rgds
Andre

ALuPin@web.de

On Jun 13, 7:57 am, "ALu...@web.de" <ALu...@web.de> wrote:
> Your FAE should have told you that Lattice does generate Mentor
> licenses until end
> of April 2008. Apart from that Lattice newsletters have been sent to
> the customers
> again and again indicating the deadline for license generation. So it
> is up to oneself
> to be up to date ;o)

I don't know whether to respond to this or not. You comment seems
absurd and you end it with a smiley. I'll assume you intend to only
be funny.


> There are many things that make me feel ..ssed but I do not use it as
> topic in a
> newsgroup.

Maybe you should. I think that when we are faced with issues like
these, we shouldn't just swallow and accept them. I feel like I have
been treated dishonestly in regards to the Mentor license. This is no
different from being sold a Ford only to find out you can't have the
keys. Then they say, but you are welcome to this Corvair we have over
here. Actually there *is* a difference. I could get keys made for
the Ford.

But the real problem is that the tools I can license have been so much
trouble. The local FAE has been very supportive, but we have not been
able to get them to work properly. His last suggestion is that I try
a registry cleaner which I am reluctant to do. I want my machine to
keep running the other 150 programs that are installed.


Rick

rickman

On 12 juin, 23:48, rickman <gnu...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Today Active HDL refuses to open the design file saying,
>
> You do not have valid license to use workspace with more than one
> design. Contact Aldec for ordering information sa...@aldec.com
>
> Criminy! What made the tool decide today that this was two designs?
> I need to get work done and this thing is crapping on me again.

My experience with that error message is when you try to load a
workspace (.aws) that has two or more designs (.adf) in it. This
happens only with the DE edition. The PE edition permits you to have
more than one design per workspace. The problem is that Active-HDL
will let you add as many designs to the workspace as you want, but
will not let you open the resulting workspace later on!

My suggestion (if that's indeed your problem) is to not load any
workspace when Active-HDL starts and instead open the .awf design file
directly.

I agree with you (unlike Alupin) that this is indeed the right place
to complain about such problems...

Patrick

Patrick Dubois

rickman wrote:
\
> I have had licensing issues ever since.

Everyone with a license has licensing problems sometimes.

> Today Active HDL refuses to open the design file saying,
> You do not have valid license to use workspace with more than one
> design. Contact Aldec for ordering information

So what did Aldec say?

> Would I be having this same problem if I had the Modelsim license?

Not for MentorSE or X-oem or A-oem.

> I swear, I will never go hungry again!... I mean, I'll never go
> without open source tools again!

Last I checked, all of the sim vendors
will email a full-up license for a month trial.
Deal with them directly and try before you buy.

Good luck.

-- Mike Treseler

Mike Treseler

On Jun 13, 11:58 am, Patrick Dubois <prdub...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12 juin, 23:48, rickman <gnu...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Today Active HDL refuses to open the design file saying,
>
> > You do not have valid license to use workspace with more than one
> > design. Contact Aldec for ordering information sa...@aldec.com
>
> > Criminy! What made the tool decide today that this was two designs?
> > I need to get work done and this thing is crapping on me again.
>
> My experience with that error message is when you try to load a
> workspace (.aws) that has two or more designs (.adf) in it. This
> happens only with the DE edition. The PE edition permits you to have
> more than one design per workspace. The problem is that Active-HDL
> will let you add as many designs to the workspace as you want, but
> will not let you open the resulting workspace later on!
>
> My suggestion (if that's indeed your problem) is to not load any
> workspace when Active-HDL starts and instead open the .awf design file
> directly.
>
> I agree with you (unlike Alupin) that this is indeed the right place
> to complain about such problems...
>
> Patrick


Thank you for the advice. That is the sort of info I couldn't find in
the docs. Vendors give pet names to all sorts of file organizations,
but don't tell you exactly what they mean. I have not been able to
find what a workspace or design means. Now I know, at least I know
more...

I don't recall creating two designs, but then I don't recall creating
*any* designs... I will see what happens with the current workspace
when I try to reopen it.

Rick

rickman

On Jun 13, 1:12 pm, Mike Treseler <mike_trese...@comcast.net> wrote:
> rickman wrote:
>
> \
>
> > I have had licensing issues ever since.
>
> Everyone with a license has licensing problems sometimes.
>
> > Today Active HDL refuses to open the design file saying,
> > You do not have valid license to use workspace with more than one
> > design. Contact Aldec for ordering information sa...@aldec.com
>
> So what did Aldec say?

Aldec didn't say anything because my understanding is they don't
support this version of the tool, that is left up to Lattice. The
problem happened late last night and I am pretty sure that even if it
was the middle of the day where the support center is, they weren't
answering the phone. Maybe I'm wrong, I didn't try.


> > Would I be having this same problem if I had the Modelsim license?
>
> Not for MentorSE or X-oem or A-oem.
>
> > I swear, I will never go hungry again!... I mean, I'll never go
> > without open source tools again!
>
> Last I checked, all of the sim vendors
> will email a full-up license for a month trial.
> Deal with them directly and try before you buy.

Buy??? I won't be buying tools for this sort of thing in the future.
I have been told that the Icarus Verilog simulator works pretty well.
I will be using that on my next project.

I was not a big fan of open source tools until I tried FreePCB. It is
an *excellent* tool and the support is much better than any commercial
product I have ever used. I have never felt like my opinions matter
to commercial developers who seem intent on adding bells and whistles
instead of trying to think like I do. The developer of FreePCB is an
engineer who *uses* the tool himself and understands a lot of what I
see and think.

I am still a bit leery of *nix tools tough. I am on a couple of *nix
EDA mailing lists and some of the stuff I read about makes me think
you need to be a developer to use some of the stuff. Sometimes I
wonder if *nix users have their brains wired differently. One tool, a
Gerber viewer, just doesn't work correctly on my PC. The level of
interest in making it work well under Windows was minimal at best. I
didn't have time to work it so I stuck with the commercial, but free
tools for Windows.

Rick

rickman

rickman wrote:

> Aldec didn't say anything because my understanding is they don't
> support this version of the tool, that is left up to Lattice.

Aldec will still answer the phone.
A good conversation starter might be:
"Hi, I like to talk to someone about
upgrading my oem Lattice license"

> The developer of FreePCB is an
> engineer who *uses* the tool himself and understands a lot of what I
> see and think.

It is rare when a cae tool developer
is also an interested user of the product.

> I am still a bit leery of *nix tools tough. I am on a couple of *nix
> EDA mailing lists and some of the stuff I read about makes me think
> you need to be a developer to use some of the stuff. Sometimes I
> wonder if *nix users have their brains wired differently.

A open source unix developer is likely most interested
in software development tools for his own use.

-- Mike Treseler

Mike Treseler

On 13 juin, 11:58, Patrick Dubois <prdub...@gmail.com> wrote:
> My suggestion (if that's indeed your problem) is to not load any
> workspace when Active-HDL starts and instead open the .awf design file
> directly.

I meant open the adf file directly, not awf. awf is a waveform file,
sorry about that.

Patrick Dubois