Altera Cyclone EP1C3T144C8N Dev. Board: Where's the documentation & support?

Question

Hello everyone,

Recently I purchased an Altera FPGA Development/Education Board from eBay. It can be found here (http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/ebayisapi.dll?viewitem&item=271296245565). When I came to Altera's website for additional information I could not find much of anything. My assumption is that this board is outdated. Reason for this is because the chip says, "cyclone ep1c3t144c8n." When searching Altera's website for this chip I could not find any documentation about it. Under the Quartus II software download I saw Cyclone II support and above, but none for the original Cyclone.

Am I missing something from Altera.com or am I just screwed with no documentation support from the seller (unbeknownst to me). I have however emailed them asking for a datasheet, but I certainly won't put counting much on that. Does anyone know of how I might go about using the board? As you can see from the link it has a bunch of goodies on it, but I have no idea what pin they are attached too, etc. If anyone is familiar with this board or might recommend me to a board that has similar features but has support/documentation etc. please feel free to recommend. I cannot help but feel I just got bought a bad product this time, but certainly want to start getting into FPGAs and especially with Quartus II software.

Thanks in advance & much appreciated,

Justin

altera_forum · Answer

You can download an older version of Quartus that supports your device, but you should have bought a board with a more recent chip.

altera_forum · Answer

http://newsroom.altera.com/press-releases/nr-low-cost-dev-kits.htm  $49 for a new board with latest generation device on it is pretty hard to beat.

altera_forum · Answer

I've ordered one of those, I should get it tomorrow.

altera_forum · Answer

--- Quote Start ---

Recently I purchased an Altera FPGA Development/Education Board from eBay. It can be found here (http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/ebayisapi.dll?viewitem&item=271296245565).

--- Quote End ---

I do not recognize this as an "official" Altera Education board; they were UP1, UP2, UP3 from SLS, and then the DE2 series from Terasic.

This board is just "a development kit with an Altera device on it".

--- Quote Start ---

When I came to Altera's website for additional information I could not find much of anything. My assumption is that this board is outdated. Reason for this is because the chip says, "cyclone ep1c3t144c8n." When searching Altera's website for this chip I could not find any documentation about it. Under the Quartus II software download I saw Cyclone II support and above, but none for the original Cyclone.

--- Quote End ---

The Cyclone handbook is still there

http://www.altera.com/literature/lit-cyc.jsp

--- Quote Start ---

Am I missing something from Altera.com

--- Quote End ---

No, the piece of the puzzle you are missing is the schematic to the board. Once you have that you can install an older version of the Quartus II Web Edition software, and you're all set.

I have many old development kits, and installations of Quartus (in Virtual Machines). Supporting old kits is not that hard.

--- Quote Start ---

or am I just screwed with no documentation support from the seller (unbeknownst to me). I have however emailed them asking for a datasheet, but I certainly won't put counting much on that.

--- Quote End ---

That would have been my suggestion ... perhaps post a new message with the question "Does anyone recognize this kit" and put the photo inline in the message.

You can also reverse engineer the design. Its only a TQFP device, so you can probe the pins ... tedious, but it would allow you to determine the connections on the board.

For example, create a design where all the pins are configured as GPIO, tri-stated by default, and then read all the pins, change the toggle switches one-by-one, and read the pins. Then for the LEDs toggle an output. The problem with outputs is you might damage the FPGA driver, so you might want to probe for the output connections using an ohmmeter.

The other thing to try, is to look at the markings on the board, or find it for sale from another vendor and see if they have the documentation.

Cheers,

Dave

altera_forum · Answer

Note that you can warn the eBay seller you will leave bad feedback if they do not supply the documentation that they indicate is available on request.

I needed to do this once for a board, and was promptly provided the documentation promised on their eBay page.

Cheers,

Dave

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Altera Cyclone EP1C3T144C8N Dev. Board: Where's the documentation & support?

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