Thank you for your reply!
Yes I also thought that might influence the initial link up between the application running on the PC and the FPGA board but then I saw that the 17.1 revision of Quartus Prime doesn't support the Cyclone 10GX device.
However, I did download the 17.1 version of Quartus and installed it and get exactly the same result. I'm confident now that the JTAG interface is intact but have notice that when I open the System console I receive the following error which might be a symptom of the same problem that the Board Test System is having accessing the evaluation board ..
May 16, 2019 11:57:08 AM com.altera.debug.core
SEVERE: Unable to scan chain: HARDWARE_DISABLED
Unable to scan chain: HARDWARE_DISABLED
at com.altera.systemconsole.internal.plugin.jtag.aji.JtagException.create(JtagException.java:24)
at com.altera.systemconsole.internal.plugin.jtag.aji.AJICable.getDevices0(Native Method)
at com.altera.systemconsole.internal.plugin.jtag.aji.AJICable$2.call(AJICable.java:331)
at com.altera.systemconsole.internal.plugin.jtag.aji.AJICable$2.call(AJICable.java:324)
at com.altera.systemconsole.internal.plugin.jtag.aji.AJIChannel$JtagLockHolder.callWithLockHeld(AJIChannel.java:98)
at com.altera.systemconsole.internal.plugin.jtag.aji.AJIChannel.callWithLockHeld(AJIChannel.java:80)
at com.altera.systemconsole.internal.plugin.jtag.aji.AJICable.queryDevices(AJICable.java:324)
at com.altera.systemconsole.internal.plugin.jtag.JtagConnectionProvider.queryCableDevices(JtagConnectionProvider.java:232)
at com.altera.systemconsole.internal.plugin.jtag.JtagConnectionProvider.doRescan(JtagConnectionProvider.java:198)
at com.altera.systemconsole.internal.plugin.jtag.JtagConnectionProvider.access$000(JtagConnectionProvider.java:41)
at com.altera.systemconsole.internal.plugin.jtag.JtagConnectionProvider$2$1.run(JtagConnectionProvider.java:123)
I'm still in trouble !! Any further help or clarification would be appreciated.