Old PCI Development Kit Compatibility

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I'm working on a project that requires the PCI bus. I currently have a PC with an Altera license (Quartus II, ver. 10.0) that I purchased in 2010. But now that I'm starting on this new PCI project I want to borrow an old Altera PCI Development Kit, Cyclone II Edition (2005 I think), from a colleague to play with before I start on the actual project. The first thing I want to try is sending some commands from my host SBC to the kit development board via PCI bus: read/write memory, light leds, etc.

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What operating system did you want to implement your PCI software?

Device driver development for PCI devices under Linux is pretty simple. For performing read/write access, its even simpler, as you do not even need to write a driver. In this PCIe thread, there is a zip file, and in that zip file is a program called pci_debug, it can be used for accessing any BAR on any PCI or PCIe device under Linux.

http://www.alteraforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=35678

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So here's my question: In order to utilize this old kit's development board and the sample software and hardware image that come with it, do I need to install the software from this kit which comes with Quartus II 4.0 or can I simply port all his stuff to the Quartus II 10.0 (and NIOS II 10.0) that I already have installed (and licensed)? And if I have to install Quartus II 4.0 to use this kit, will installing Quartus II 4.0 have an adverse effect on the Quartus II 10.0 I already have installed?

Any suggestions or guidance would be greatly appreciated.

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I have multiple versions of Quartus installed, and they work fine together. I've also started installing older versions of Quartus inside a VirtualBox Virtual Machine. If you run the virtual machine inside a Windows XP or Linux host, the USB-Blaster can be given to the VM, so it works like a real development machine (for some reason this doesn't work under Windows 7).

The other thing I'll sometimes do is install the kit and then copy the installed folder to a USB drive, and then uninstall the kit. That way I can take a look at the example code. Generally however all I find useful is the schematic and the top-level design file. Once I have those, I create my own basic top-level file.

Cheers,

Dave

Hi Dave,

Thanks for the quick response. In the system I am developing the host PC (SBC) will be running on Windows 7. I plan to use WinDriver (Jungo) to implement the device drivers (the kit itself recommends this product). But I wasn't planning to install the kit software on this SBC because I figured Quartus II 4.0 (2005) was unlikely to be compatible with Windows 7 - and I wasn't thrilled with the idea of using Windows XP mode for development. Rather, I thought I would install this old kit software on a PC that I have running Windows XP, do my embedded system stuff (loading the hardware image, etc) on it and tether it to the kit development board via the USB-Blaster. This is the same PC on which I already have a licensed Quartus II 10.0 installed. Then I would install WinDriver on the host SBC side for the device driver development. The idea is to get some practice working with Altera PCI (not PCIe) before I get the real hardware.

Have you tried installing and running old Quartus II versions on Windows 7?

Thanks again for your response.

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Thanks for the quick response. In the system I am developing the host PC (SBC) will be running on Windows 7. I plan to use WinDriver (Jungo) to implement the device drivers (the kit itself recommends this product). But I wasn't planning to install the kit software on this SBC because I figured Quartus II 4.0 (2005) was unlikely to be compatible with Windows 7 - and I wasn't thrilled with the idea of using Windows XP mode for development. Rather, I thought I would install this old kit software on a PC that I have running Windows XP. This is the same PC on which I already have a licensed Quartus II 10.0 installed.

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Yes, install the kit software under Windows XP, grab the files you need, and then start porting the design to a newer version of Quartus.

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Have you tried installing and running old Quartus II versions on Windows 7?

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I have Quartus 11.0, 11.1sp1 and 11.1sp2 installed on Windows 7.

Cheers,

Dave

Ok, here's the problem: the kit's Quartus II v2.2 reference design project file uses an old format, .quartus (rather than .qpf). When I try to open the project in my Quartus II v10.0 it doesn't recognize the format and takes me to the New Project Wizard. Does anyone know how to convert a .quartus project (Quartus II v3.0 and earlier) to a .qpf project (Quartus II v4.0 and beyond)?

My ultimate goal is to generate an .sopcinfo file (SOPC Builder) from this old reference design and I'm stuck. Any ideas?

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Ok, here's the problem: the kit's Quartus II v2.2 reference design project file uses an old format, .quartus (rather than .qpf). When I try to open the project in my Quartus II v10.0 it doesn't recognize the format and takes me to the New Project Wizard. Does anyone know how to convert a .quartus project (Quartus II v3.0 and earlier) to a .qpf project (Quartus II v4.0 and beyond)?

My ultimate goal is to generate an .sopcinfo file (SOPC Builder) from this old reference design and I'm stuck. Any ideas?

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Hmm, two ideas come to mind:

1) Install Quartus II v2.2 so you can look at how the design was created, and write down the appropriate parameters.

Open Quartus II v10.0 and insert those parameters into the latest version of the PCI IP core that you plan on using.

2) Just start from scratch, and ignore the reference design completely.

I'd start with (2) and if you get stuck, go back to (1) to see if it has the information you are missing.

Cheers,

Dave

PS: Another option:

(3) Install a slightly newer version of Quartus than v2.2 and see if it will read the .quartus file. This FTP site has some of the older Web Edition releases:

ftp://ftp.altera.com/outgoing/release/