BeMicro and Programming Under Linux

Hello Everyone,

I have spent some time waiting for answers from both Arrow and Altera about supporting the BeMicro under multiple platforms with no joy.

Here is what Altera said:

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Dear David,

We are sorry that we do not support this device, you may need to contact Arrow for the supporting.

We shall set the SR to close pending.

thanks

Best regards

kenny

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Here is what Arrow said:

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Hi David -- please see the answer below RE the BEMICRO device...

The BeMicro is only supported on a Windows platform. There are no Linux drivers for it.

I am afraid I could not provide more details

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Brian Mackintosh, Manager

Arrow Online Service Center

(p) 877-237-8621

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So it looks like if you are using anything other than Windows XP, that you are SOL with the BeMicro.

The sad thing is ... from what I can see, writing some sort of wrapper or interpreter for the BeMicro should be relatively trivial, especially if Arrow was willing to open source the code of their driver, and someone could do it in less than a day. Unfortunately, I don't have the time right now. Perhaps someday in the near future, if someone hasn't already done it, I will do it when I get some time.

Additionally, with the new release of Quartus II v10, it should have been easy for Altera to incorporate a hook for the BeMicro, and equivalent "minimal" USB interfaces in the Programmer software.

Well, I am somewhat disappointed in the support that both Altera and Arrow provided for the BeMicro. I wish there were some way to impress upon them that they should consider that people run Quartus on different platforms.

Dave Rector

*:^)