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Altera_Forum's avatar
Altera_Forum
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14 years ago

Stratix V GX SI Dev board issue

Hi, I've recently purchased a Stratix V GX Transceiver SI Development Board and I'm having problems getting the Board Test System working.

I want to use the SFP loopback feature of the BTS but when I click the Start button under the XFP/SFP+ tab it shows the Tx and Rx rates as 0.000 MBps and 0 detected errors. The same thing happens when I try the GXB SMA loopback.

Any idea how I can get it to work?

Or maybe a link to an alternate way of doing 10 Gbps PRBS loopback testing?

6 Replies

  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    14 years ago

    Have you tried hitting the clear button?

    Also, try using serial loop back just in case. To do that, go to PMA setting and check all the serial-loopback(s) so you should be able to see the RX data.
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    14 years ago

    Yeah, I've tried hitting clear before, and it had no effect.

    My problem seems to be that it isn't transmitting at all (hence the 0.0000 MBps Tx rate display).

    I just tried checking all the Serial Loopbacks as well, to no avail.
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    14 years ago

    Couple of things to check...

    Is design loaded correctly? you may want to check LEDs are blinking.

    Is all dipsw(es) set correctly?

    Lastly, is clk(s) set correctly? You can(need to) set Si570.
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    14 years ago

    I believe the design has loaded properly. The last 4 User LEDs are blinking. Also, when I switch to the XFP/SFP+ tab I'm able to observe optical output on a scope, but I'm unable to view an eye diagram because I don't know what port to use as a clock to trigger to.

    The switches are all in their factory positions.

    The loopback options in both the SMA and XFP/SFP+ tabs don't seem to do anything. Hitting Start just shows 0.0000 MBps TX and RX, as reported previously.

    I believe I'm supposed to use the "Clock Control" application to set the Si570, right? However when I try to run it I get this error:

    "Connecting to the target board...

    java.lang.Exception: No USB Blaster detected.

    Please check connections and restart the program."

    It seems to be the same problem as this person's: http://www.alteraforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=31893
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    14 years ago

    OK, I was miss reading your original post. Sounds like the There is signal on Tx but not on Rx. Sounds like if you have loop back, the GUI should show the Rx...how did you set the serial loop back mode? As far as I recall, you need to set '1' to all the channel(s).

    For the CLK GUI, I thought there was a patch on it.

    ftp://ftp.altera.com/outgoing/devkit/patch

    You may want to give them a try.
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    14 years ago

    Thanks for the link to the patch. The Clock Control connects to the board properly now, but I'm not sure what frequencies I'm supposed to set. The user guide doesn't seem to say anything about needing to set any for the BTS to work, just that it is possible.

    Right now I am able to get steady optical output on the scope the moment I configure the board, but the SMA output seems to be in intermittent bursts. So the SFP Tx works, but SMA doesn't.

    In both cases when I try to click on "Start" under the Loopback tab the GUI displays the Tx rate as 0.0000 MBps, which is why I wasn't sure if it was transmitting earlier. The Rx rate is also the same, and inserting errors has no effect.

    Under the PMA settings I've selected '0', '1', '2', ... '7' for both the 'All Channels' and 'Channel 0' option and in every case the result is the same as above.