Lattice ispDOWNLOAD cable... just a FX2

[marshallh]

This is what $179 gets you
HW-USBN-2A

Click for full size - http://imageshack.us/a/img89/9992/mr8q.jpg




Just a fx2 and output buffers. heh

[abyrvalg]

Dump the EEPROM 

[mikeselectricstuff]

You can buy a Chinese box that emulates Xilinx Altera and Lattice ISP boxes - I got one recently but not tried it yet.
One word of warning on the original Lattice one - I've found it to be flaky, and have always needed to add 47-100pf capacitance between TCK and ground, near the device. I've seen this on 3 different Lattice device families

[marshallh]

Thanks for the tip.  I found on Altera devices that a strong pulldown is necessary on TCK - they originally recommended 10K which is not enough. I used 1K and all was well - a few months later their handbooks changed to that value. Before the clock was swinging all over the place when scoping.

Lattice recommends 4.7k on all jtag resistors (4.7k pulldown on TCK).

I also have one of those chinese 3-in-1 progrmamers like you mentioned. It failed to work properly, it also has a FX2 inside it with a Xilinx cpld and Lattice cpld. Pics if anyone is interested.