If a Foundation customer receives a dongle from Aldec for their Active-VHDL project, it may inactivate the user's Foundation environment. The Foundation tools will appear to function initially, but the user will have lost access to certain applications and functions which should be available with Foundation. The Foundation tools will be put into an evaluation mode.
This problem occurs because the hardware key which Aldec supplied the customer authorizes Active-VHDL only. When the Foundation Project Manager is started, it senses the key, sees that it is not authorized for many of the Foundation features, and thus puts Foundation into an evaluation mode. Foundation itself does not require the key, but if it does see a key, it will read it and obey the features on the key.
There are 2 possible solutions to this problem.
Solution
1
Contact Aldec, and they will supply you with a new keycode which will reprogram the key to authorize the Foundation features as well as the Active-VHDL features. Aldec may be reached at:
phone: 702-456-1222 email: support@aldec.com
Aldec will need the number of the key, which may be found on the hardware key itself.
2
By simply removing the hardware key from the parallel port of the PC, Foundation will again work as normal. However, you will not be able to use Active-VHDL until you return the key to the port.