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So I'm wondering how much wasted effort there is in starting with ISSP as it will get me up and running quicker.....
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The System Console approach is not too bad. Rather than doing a lot of reading, start with 'doing'. Create a Quartus project, select the Stratix IV part, start Qsys, create a new Qsys design, add the JTAG Avalon-MM master, the RAM, and the PIO component. Put the LED at address 0, and the RAM at say address 0x1000. Instantiate the system in a top-level VHDL or Verilog design. Synthesize it. Assuming your PIO has 8-bits, go into the pin assignments editor and assign these pins to the LEDs on the board. Re-synthesize the design; check the .pin file to confirm that only the LED pins are used and the others are reserved (tri-stated).
Start system console, eg., in Quartus v11.0 Tools->Transceiver Toolkit, and then type 'source {<windows path to>/jtag_cmds.tcl}', where the curly braces pass the path to the 'source' command as a Tcl list. Look at the jtag_cmds.tcl file to see the procedures in there (the .tcl file is in the .zip attachment).
Now type 'jtag_read_32 0' to read the LEDs, 'jtag_write_32 0 0x55' to write to them, or 'jtag_read_32 0x1000' and 'jtag_write_32 0x1000 0x12345678'
to access the RAM. There are also LED Tcl procedures defined, eg. led_read and led_write 0x55.
That should give you enough of an incentive to go this route :)
Cheers,
Dave
Honored Contributor
