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Altera_Forum
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15 years ago

Stratix IV Transceiver SI Dev Kit: The GUI could not communicate with the board...

After spending 1.5 months going back and forth with Altera support in Penang, I figured I'd try here.

My original support request was as follows:

--- Quote Start ---

We have been unable to get the GUI to communicate with the board. We’ve tried a number of combinations of versions of drivers (although primarily the drivers that came with it – version 9.1). Along with 4 computers running different OS’s: Win7 64-bit, Win7 32-bit, Vista 32-bit and XP-Pro 32-bit. In all cases the programming and signal tap can communicate with the board using the USB Blaster ... at least I assume they can since the correct device is recognized. When we try and connect in the GUI we get the error message:

The GUI could not communicate with the board...

We also tried different .flash files.

I'm inclined to think there is something wrong with the board.

--- Quote End ---

After some exchange with support, they indicated that the GUI *only* supports XP SP2 which was released in 2004 and which Microsoft *stopped* supporting in the summer of 2010. So after spending a lot of time trying to find a copy of XP2, and finally getting a computer up and running with it, I followed the suggested procedures with the same result, the GUI would not communicate with the board.

In all cases I was able to program the board using Quartus II.

I'd appreciate if anyone that has been successful in running the Transceiver Dev Kit could let me know if there were any tricks you needed to get it running (such as finding a computer that happened to be running Win XP SP2).

Thanks in advance.

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  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    14 years ago

    I had the same problem with the Stratix IV transceiver SI GT version (The GUI could not communicate with the board). I downloaded the QII9.1 version and now it works fine. Many thanks Brad.

  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    14 years ago

    The problem after installing QII 9.1 is that now the SI board is working fine with the GUI but we cannot use the Transceiver toolkit that is available on QII 11.0. Has anybody found any trick for this?

  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    14 years ago

    when you open QII 11.0 the environment variables should be updated so that everything works correctly

    have you tried the Transceiver Toolkit reference designs (not sure if they work in 11.0, but i used them in 10.1sp1)?
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    14 years ago

    If you have 2 PCs, you might be able to do like this as well

    PC1 connect directly to the board and run the BTS GUI

    PC2 connect PC1 via network(remote-jtag) and use the Transceiver Toolkit.

    PC1 need to have Q9.1 to use the BTS GUI

    PC2 need to have Q11.0 to use the toolkit
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    14 years ago

    The solution that I found is that:

    1. You first install the QII 11.0

    2. Then you install the QII 9.1 on the same machine

    3. You run the Programmer (either from 9.1 or 11) to download the file

    4. The GUI for the SI board is working fine using the 9.1 drivers.

    5. You run the QII 11 to load the transceiver toolkit