Forum Discussion
Occasional ContributorCyclone VGT Dev Kit boards - some new boards failing to boot from NOR Flash
Occasional ContributorHi Fakhrul, I looked into your questions.
I have 4 of the bad boards in hand, so I can verify the following serial numbers and the U29 part. All four have the same part that the schematic calls for:
5CPCIE 00100129 - has IDT QS3861
5CPCIE 00100142 - has IDT QS3861
5CPCIE 00100147 - has IDT QS3861
5CPCIE 00100148 - has IDT QS3861
An older Rev B I have here is a good board, it has an IDT Q53VH8COQG device on board.
You mention : " The difference between the factory .pof and self-compiled version may point to differences in fitter/timing results." - since I am using the same provided source files, and the same Quartus version, should it not create the exact same max5.pof binary?
More answers:
- For the 3 boards that work with the factory .pof, do they complete configuration in a single attempt or still show retries? - it seems like the configure in a single attempt, based only on the boot up speed.
- For the 2 boards that still fail, is the retry behavior identical across all images? - yes, random N number of retries until the ERR led turns on.
- Have you compared settings between your compiled .pof and the factory .pof (e.g. compression, configuration options)? - I used the exact factory source files with the factory QSF and constraints files, I get a different checksum, and my compiled factory image does not work at all.
- Could you share the serial numbers of the affected boards? There may be a specific affected range for certain revisions. - yes, see above. (missing one, I don't have it at the moment)
- For the silk screen difference, if possible, please share board markings or photos for comparison.
For my older good working board, there is a silk screen label UK/CA that is in the open to the "East" of the USB jack. For the new bad boards, the UK/CA label is there partly covered by the FPGA fan, further "East".
This will help us check if your boards fall within any known affected batch or if this is a new variation.
Regular ContributorHi GordWait,
Thanks for the detailed follow-up and the serial number information, this helps a lot.
A couple of clarifications from our side:
- The serial numbers you shared (5CPCIE00100129 and above) are outside the known affected range documented in the KDB (5CPCIE00100011 to 5CPCIE00100115).
- Based on our internal data, the impacted component is expected to be QS3VH800QG, which can affect the AS configuration path.
Regarding the U29 marking you mentioned (Q53VH8COQG), we suspect this may be a marking interpretation issue. The assembled part for this location is QS3VH800QG, and depending on the top marking, it can sometimes be misread (e.g. “QS3VH800” appearing similar to “Q53VH8CO”).
Could you help double confirm the marking again (or share a close-up photo if convenient)? This will help ensure we are referencing the exact component correctly.
At the same time, there is still a mismatch between:
- Expected impacted component vs what you’re seeing behaving as “good”
- Your boards being outside the known affected SN range
So your case may not fully align with the documented issue. We are checking this internally and will update once we have more clarity.
Thanks again for the very thorough debug work.
Regards,
Fakhrul
