Third Party Boards - Detecting a Connected Board
When a Devices view is accessed (View » Devices Views), depending on the configuration of that view Altium Designer scans the USB and/or Parallel ports to determine what is connected.
For a parallel port connection, the software tries to use the mappings defined in any JTAG Board files it finds in the \System folder of the installation.
If you have connected the development board indirectly via a NanoBoard, only the Nanoboard.JTGBRD file will be used, irrespective of whether you have defined signal mappings in an alternative JTAG Board file.
For each file, it scans the Board, Hard, Soft and SPI channels, if defined. For third party boards, only the Hard and Soft channels will normally be defined.
The software will test to see if the Hard Device chain length is greater than zero (i.e. a physical device is connected). If the result of the test is negative, the software will pass over the file and scan using the next file.
When a mapping is found that yields a connected device at the other end, scanning is stopped and the JTAG Board file containing that mapping is used.
JTAG Board files whose mapping definitions contain one or more board IDs in the [BoardDetails] section will take precedence over those that do not. Currently, the Board channel section and board IDs are only definable for the NanoBoard, in its corresponding JTAG Board file. Detection of a connected NanoBoard and the use of board IDs is beyond the scope of this topic.