Sending data from Cyclone V FPGA to PC through USB Blaster

Try this wiki article for the USB-Blaster II

http://alterawiki.com/wiki/on-board_usb-blaster_ii

I do not have a board with a USB-Blaster II, so cannot comment on how well it works.

I wrote a tutorial on how to use the USB-Blaster for communications, perhaps some aspects will be relevant

http://www.alterawiki.com/wiki/using_the_usb-blaster_as_an_sopc/qsys_avalon-mm_master_tutorial

Cheers,

Dave

Thanks Dave I intend to communicate through the dedicated USB lines in the MAX II and not the JTAG lines. Is there any code for configuring from the host(PC) in order to facilitate the USB data transmission from PC to FPGA and vice versa, by configuring the MAX II(USB BLaster II) or should the MAX II firmware be modified.

Thanks,

Gowtham

Read about the System Console USB Interface provided with USB Blaster II. It offers a fast parallel connection that can be used in concurrence with the Altera JTAG interface.

You don't have the MAX II design files and won't be able to integrate the existing JTAG interface with a newly designed user USB interface. Does the Dev Kit provide a factory recovery file for MAX II? I guess, it doesn't.

You don't need to modify the MAX II firmware to use the USB direct interface. There are two ways to do it:

The easy way is to instantiate an altera_usb_debug_master within your FPGA and connect its conduit interface to the pins which route to the USB direct pins on the USB-Blaster II MAX. Then use SystemConsole to read and write through this master.

The difficult way is to take apart this component and use the altera_usb_debug_fifos component within it to terminate the interface. This gets you a raw avalon streaming FIFO in each direction that you can connect to your hardware. Use the appropriate host libraries (libusb on linux or winusb on windows) to locate and open the USB device - the second set of interfaces are used for communicating with the direct endpoint. Any data sent to the USB OUT interface will appear on the fifo's avst_src interface, data from the avst_sink interface will appear on the host's USB IN interface. USB Packet boundaries are ignored for out, for in there is a ~100 clock timeout before the MAX sends an incomplete packet to the host.

I recommend getting the easy way working first even if you plan to use the difficult way later as it will get past the trivial but inevitable mistakes (pin assignments or clocks wrong etc).

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I intend to communicate through the dedicated USB lines in the MAX II and not the JTAG lines. Is there any code for configuring from the host(PC) in order to facilitate the USB data transmission from PC to FPGA and vice versa, by configuring the MAX II(USB BLaster II) or should the MAX II firmware be modified.

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I'd follow Wombat's advice on this one :)

The USB-Blaster II is a weird beast; Altera have used a Cypress PHY that could have implemented both the JTAG interface and the parallel interface (FPGA4U do it that way, http://fpga4u.epfl.ch/wiki/fx2), there is no need for the MAX II.

Good luck with your testing. Feel free to write up some notes and post them to the wiki to help others.

Cheers,

Dave

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You don't need to modify the MAX II firmware to use the USB direct interface. There are two ways to do it:

The easy way is to instantiate an altera_usb_debug_master within your FPGA and connect its conduit interface to the pins which route to the USB direct pins on the USB-Blaster II MAX. Then use SystemConsole to read and write through this master.

The difficult way is to take apart this component and use the altera_usb_debug_fifos component within it to terminate the interface. This gets you a raw avalon streaming FIFO in each direction that you can connect to your hardware. Use the appropriate host libraries (libusb on linux or winusb on windows) to locate and open the USB device - the second set of interfaces are used for communicating with the direct endpoint. Any data sent to the USB OUT interface will appear on the fifo's avst_src interface, data from the avst_sink interface will appear on the host's USB IN interface. USB Packet boundaries are ignored for out, for in there is a ~100 clock timeout before the MAX sends an incomplete packet to the host.

I recommend getting the easy way working first even if you plan to use the difficult way later as it will get past the trivial but inevitable mistakes (pin assignments or clocks wrong etc).

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Hi i am a newbie to system console and been trying to get the commands for performing the read and write in the USB debug master component.

The command sequence below opens master number <id>, reads 16 bytes from it, writes them back and then closes it again.

set master  <id>]
set handle
set data 
master_write_memory $handle 0 $data
close_service master $handle

The master_read|write_memory commands are much faster than master_read|write_8|16|32 commands as the memory commands do the access as a whole block, the specified width commands do one or more accesses at the exact size specified which is much slower. You can use master_write_from_file if you have the data available in binary format in a local file.

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The command sequence below opens master number <id>, reads 16 bytes from it, writes them back and then closes it again.

set master  <id>]
set handle
set data 
master_write_memory $handle 0 $data
close_service master $handle

The master_read|write_memory commands are much faster than master_read|write_8|16|32 commands as the memory commands do the access as a whole block, the specified width commands do one or more accesses at the exact size specified which is much slower. You can use master_write_from_file if you have the data available in binary format in a local file.

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Thank you wombat but is there any tcl script in particular for executing these commands??

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Thank you wombat but is there any tcl script in particular for executing these commands??

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I don't think I really understand your question.

You should start SystemConsole from the Quartus GUI (or by typing system-console from the command line), the bottom right hand window is the script window into which you can type Tcl and see the results. If you save your script into a file then the Tcl source command can be used to execute it.

Alternatively, you can right click on the /scripts node in the system explorer window, open the user scripts folder and then create a Tcl file in there. You can then run it by clicking on it.