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Altera_Forum's avatar
Altera_Forum
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14 years ago

Cyclone/Stratix USB interface problems

Hi guys,

I'm looking to sort out a board so that it can transfer data onto a USB disk, the data coming from an ethernet port. I'm not worried about the ethernet part, that's been taken care of.

I have two dev boards available to me - a Stratix III FPGA dev kit (http://www.altera.com/products/devkits/altera/kit-siii-host.html)

and a Cyclone III FPGA starter kit (http://www.altera.com/products/devkits/altera/kit-cyc3-starter.html)

A collegue is using the stratix board to deal with the ethernet side of things, so I've been using the Cyclone. However I'm not entirely sure whether the USB interface on the Cyclone board is ONLY for programming the board, or if it can be used as a USB mass storage interface as well.

I'm fairly well assured that the stratix can do this due to it's CY7C68013A-56LFXC USB peripheral and FTDI FIFO, but this kind of hardware seems absent from the Cyclone.

Anyone shed some light on this? If there isn't a way of using the USB interface as is, are there any possible workarounds such as an HSMC board or similar?

Thanks,

- Davey

1 Reply

  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
    Icon for Honored Contributor rankHonored Contributor
    14 years ago

    The USB interface on Cyclone III Starter Kit is ONLY for programming - nothing more.

    I am not sure about Stratix III devkit, but on Cyclone III development board (EP3C120 version), they placed CY7C68013 in parallel to FTDI chip on USB bus. That Cypress chip is left for future use and always kept in reset. I doubt it is useful on this board, so chec kif they didn't do the same for Stratix devkit.