Please help with the error led turned red

Doesn't sound good.

I've blown a few pins on FPGAs in my time and each time I've been lucky and got away with just damaging the pin in question. The rest of the FPGA has been fine. In your case, it appears you have done more damage than this and potentially blown the whole chip. Which isn't good news.

Use this as an opportunity to work on your debug skills.

1. Work out where the red LED comes from, eg., if its from a configuration controller

2. Work out which pins you might have touched together, eg., if you touched a 3.3V power pin and shorted it to an I/O pin, that should not have caused damage, but if it was a 5V power supply ...

3. Try programming the board using an external JTAG programmer.

You might want to try that last step first ... if the FPGA is detected, then its probably ok ...

Cheers,

Dave

You can try running the built in test ..

I took this from the user guide and have been impressed with the BTS on the Stratix-V board I had

I agree with DWH .. its not the end of the world ... just an opportunity to learn.

I don't have the schematic but the red led I saw in the user documentation I do have was off the MAX system controller.

I will check the schematic ... can you give us a clue where you were probing ... generally I/O's are somewhat forgiving and a bad I/O can

easily be substituted for a good one ... if there are higher voltages involved say + or - 12 VDC then that could do some serious damage.

Best Regards, Bob.

.... "The kit includes an application called the Board Test System (BTS). The BTS provides

an easy-to-use interface to alter functional settings and observe the results. You can

use the BTS to test board components, modify functional parameters, observe

performance, and measure power usage. While using the BTS, you reconfigure the

FPGA several times with test designs specific to the functionality you are testing. (You

can also use the BTS as a reference source for designing systems.)

To install the BTS, follow the steps in “Installing the Development Kit” on page 3–1. ..."

Thank you all for your helpful advises.

I have checked out the schematic of the header and it turned out there were 12V power supply pins aligned right next to the normal I/O pins.

Obviously I have touched this pin with some normal pins and it have destroyed the I/O pins.

But luckily enough, I could still program the FPGA through JTAG. And I found a solution by substituting the former used pins with others.

But anyhow, some part of the development kit seems broken, with the error LED still flashing.

Thank you all again for the help that I really appreciate. Have a nice one!

--- Quote Start ---

I have checked out the schematic of the header and it turned out there were 12V power supply pins aligned right next to the normal I/O pins.

Obviously I have touched this pin with some normal pins and it have destroyed the I/O pins.

--- Quote End ---

Don't feel bad. I had a similar problem in the past; when probing a switch-mode power supply circuit with a scope, I shorted the 12V input power to the enable signal, and that enable signal was driven by a MAX II CPLD. The CPLD was destroyed, but luckily it was in a TQFP package, so I could just replace it.

--- Quote Start ---

But luckily enough, I could still program the FPGA through JTAG. And I found a solution by substituting the former used pins with others.

But anyhow, some part of the development kit seems broken, with the error LED still flashing.

--- Quote End ---

I'm glad to hear your kit can still be used.

Cheers,

Dave