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Altera_Forum's avatar
Altera_Forum
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14 years ago

A strange JTAG configuration problem

I worked with FPGA for years but this time there's a really interesting problem comes to me:

My board can be configured successfully through JTAG only at the very first time after my PC restarted. After that,the FPGA won't work if it's configured again. While in Quartus not any configuration error was showed in the message column. Therefore, everytime when I changed my code, I have to restart my computer to download the FPGA again. During the process, I do not need to restart my board. Quartus compatibility issue is my first guess of the problem.

P.S. My working environment is

Quartus II 10.1, Windows 7 Enterprise 64bit, EP1C4F324C8

4 Replies

  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    14 years ago

    Sorry, I only have questions at first.

    I'm guessing that you're using a USB-Blaster, please confirm.

    Can you do any other JTAG operations, for example running `jtagconfig --debug` in a command window? If not then what error do you get?

    Is the jtagserver process running, if so then how much CPU does it use? Does killing it make any difference?
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    14 years ago

    --- Quote Start ---

    Sorry, I only have questions at first.

    I'm guessing that you're using a USB-Blaster, please confirm.

    Can you do any other JTAG operations, for example running `jtagconfig --debug` in a command window? If not then what error do you get?

    Is the jtagserver process running, if so then how much CPU does it use? Does killing it make any difference?

    --- Quote End ---

    Yes I am using the USB Blaster Rev.C. I tried the "jtagconfig --debug" command, the output is:

    USB-Blaster [USB-0]

    020850DD EP1C4 <TR=10>

    Captured DR after Reset = <020850DD> [32]

    Captured IR after reset = <155> [10]

    Captured Bypass chain = <0> [1]

    After input this command, no jtageserver process showed in the process window of task manager, but there's a jtag server service showed in the services window. My computer's CPU usage remained around 1% before and after I executed the command. It seems that the service doesn't have any CPU expenditure.
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    14 years ago

    So if I understand right, after you configure the board you can run jtagconfig but you can't do another sof download? That's quite odd.

    What does `netstat -ano | grep 1309` give you? I think this command puts the process number on the right hand side of the result. Are there any processes with established connections to jtagserver? If so then what are they?
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    14 years ago

    --- Quote Start ---

    So if I understand right, after you configure the board you can run jtagconfig but you can't do another sof download? That's quite odd.

    What does `netstat -ano | grep 1309` give you? I think this command puts the process number on the right hand side of the result. Are there any processes with established connections to jtagserver? If so then what are they?

    --- Quote End ---

    Yes, this is an odd problem. I can use JTAG to configure the board only once, and if I want to use JTAG to configure the board again, I have to restart my computer. Even log-off does not work. I changed to use another computer with windows7 32-bit, same phenomena.

    I'm quite not familar with the windows processes stuff. Now I'm going to use PROM to configure the FPGA, if PROM works then I'll forget the JTAG.