USB JTAG Adapter

Altium's USB JTAG Adapter allows you to fully experience the benefits of LiveDesign and interact live with your chosen development board via Altium Designer.

Connecting to third-party boards

Altium also provides support for an extensive range of third-party development boards. This support can include constraint files and example projects that demonstrate the use of processor cores and virtual instruments.

Please also check

to ensure the full support on your device by USB JTAG Adapter. If the device is not on the list, the support may be limited to the Live Update of pin state of the device.

Connecting to third-party boards using an alternate Mini-HDMI connection cable

For a Mini-HDMI connection to a third-party or custom developed target board the Tag-Connect cable can be used together with Altium's USB JTAG adapter. For more details about this connection cable please have a look at

Connecting to a NanoBoard

The USB JTAG Adapter is required when updating the NanoBoard firmware on a Desktop NanoBoard NB2DSK01, via the dedicated 'SYSTEM JTAG'header.

The Adapter can also be used to create a JTAG link from your PC to a NanoBoard-NB1 – which posesses a parallel port header only – using a USB connection.

Connecting to a LiveDesign Evaluation Kit

The USB JTAG Adapter can be used to connect to Live Design Evaluation Kits. The Pinout of those depends wether you connect to an Altera or Xilinx populated Kit.

More reading

We recommend that you read the below documents that provide information specifically relating to FPGA design, processor cores and embedded software development.