Forum Discussion
Honored Contributorbyteblaster not showing up in hardware
Hi,
I need help with my maxII eval board. When I go to program and verify, the byteblaster does not show up. I have a pci-parallel card in my dell computer and I have added that hardware to my machine as well as the byteblaster. Still I do not see it. Has anyone seen this problem before? Can someone help? Thanks, Elliot33 Replies
Altera_ForumI once had a problem similar to this. I installed the quartus, installed the usbblaster from it's driver directory and some times later installed another version(8.0), so I removed the old version and usb blaster didn't work anymore.
it turned out that by removing a driver's directory for usbblaster, it didn't work any longer. ( though the driver program always should copy it files to windows directory.) by installing the usbblaster drivers from the latest version, the problem dissapeared. I hope this works for you.- Altera_Forum
hello,
can it be possible to connect a ByteBlaster MV Cable through a parallel-serial/usb adapter to a serial/usb port of the computer? i have this cable, but i don't want to use it on the parallel port of the computer, the main idea is to use it on a laptop, and laptops usually don't have parallel ports. that's why i'm wondering if the adapter might be a solution to connect the ByteBlaster MV Cable to a serial/usb port Does anyone have a sugeston or an idea? Thank you very much - Altera_Forum
The Byte Blaster driver is depending on low level pin control of the LPT port. This functionality isn't provided by any available USB-to LPT bridge, as far as I know. Some USB bridge chips have a low level control option, but no respective driver exists apparently. There are some internet projects of DIY USB-to-LPT adapters, that are said to handle also low-level IO, e.g. http://www-user.tu-chemnitz.de/~heha/bastelecke/rund%20um%20den%20pc/usb2lpt/index.html.en
PCCard LPT interfaces are an option to supplement a true LPT port for a notebook computer. Terasic USB Blaster is still the best option, I think. - Altera_Forum
thank you for the fast reply.
i'm starting to have the full picture now. i wanted to explore the adapter possibility before buying a PCCard LPT interface or an usb blaster. thanks again - Altera_Forum
I had the same problems with ByteblaserMV and WinXPSP3 with parallel prot on a PCI-Card.
First the ByteblasterMV was not showing up in hardware. --> change port to LPT1 (including activating an option for lecay-support on the PCI-card.) Then the problem showed up with "Kernel mode driver not installed". --> I installed the driver for the byteblaster before .. so i installed it again. http://www.altera.com/support/software/drivers/dri-bb-xp.html This solved the problem for me. - Altera_Forum
This is an old problem with a lot of folklore and few answers. I have faced it again with a new computer (and my subscription has run out so I can't call support!).
Quatech PCMCIA parallel port works, but StarTech CB1PECP PCMCIA adapter using Oxford OX16PCI95x chip does not. Dell D400 in docking station works. Sunix PCI card parallel port in desktop machine does not work. All motherboard parallel ports seem to work and no USB attached parallel adapters that I know of will work. Those that work are set to LPT1, to Never us an interrupt, and Enable legacy PnP detection not required. What seems to be common in ones that work is the I/O address is the old default starting at 0378. The add-on parallel ports either don't show their I/O address in device manager (e.g. Sunix PCI card) or it is not configurable and not standard (e.g. StarTech/Oxford starts at FFD8). Does any one know - is it simply that the ByteBlaster xx driver needs to see the device at the legacy I/O address? Then instead of wasting money on trying different parallel adapters we could know which ones will work. And if so would it not be a small fix to make the Altera driver support different parallel port cards? Other folks devices do (e.g. Texas Instruments MSP430 programmer/emulator works happly on add-on parallel ports I have tried, and a few other parallel programmers do, too). - Altera_Forum--- Quote Start --- This is an old problem with a lot of folklore and few answers. --- Quote End --- --- Quote Start --- Does any one know - is it simply that the ByteBlaster xx driver needs to see the device at the legacy I/O address? --- Quote End --- Among the few answers, I did at least answer this particular question. Yes if seen it working with a non-legay address (0x8400../0x8800..) and a Netmos PCI adapter. Regarding wasting money -why not using a cheap Terasic USB Blaster?
- Altera_Forum
That's interesting, so I wonder what the answer is - why some don't work. And why the Byteblaster driver is so picky.
Re Terasic - I didn't know it existed, until I turned to this forum. Sounds great. I am awaiting another import clone USB Blaster that I found on ebay, and interested to see if it works. With all the good reports of the Terasic USB Blaster I would have chosen it instead, and may still need to! - Altera_Forum
Because my adapter was operating, I didn't think yet about possible differences. But it may be the case, that the drivers differ in the available extent of low level services for direct pin control.
- Altera_Forum
Can anyone confirm if it is possible to use Bytebaster2 with a PCI parallel port adapter with base address at no-standard lpt address.
I have a Byteblaster2 and a Moschip chipset pci parallel port card that I have used with others "parallel jtag/programmers" but quartus_pgm get me the message "kernel mode driver not installed"
