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Altera_Forum's avatar
Altera_Forum
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8 years ago

Altera DE0 Board not detected by Windows

Hello everyone.

I am having a problem with my Altera DE0 board and I couldn't find anything to help me out.

My board was functioning normally. Some days ago it completely stopped working with Windows.

Windows does not detect my board when I plug the USB blaster cable in my notebook. The "usb device connected" sound does not happen.

But, if I plug the USB blaster cable to the USB and the FPGA, without using the power source cord, my board powers up normally. The usb cable works like a power source.

The problem is, since this happened, I cannot program anything. Windows does not recognize my board.

Softwares and board I use:

Windows 10 x64

Quartus II 9.1sp2

Altera DE0 board (not the nano)

What I have tried so far:

Plugging the board to another computer: no "usb device connected" sound;

USBdeview: nothing related to the board appears;

Removing the Altera USB-Blaster from device manager: I uninstalled the driver from device manager. Now, windows doesn't detect my board and there is no "installing new driver" when I plug the board to usb.

What I think might have happened:

One day I accidentally turned the board on only using the USB-blaster cable, with no power cord from the source. After this day, my notebook stopped recognizing the board.

Anyone knows any solution to this?

Thanks.

(edit: )

Now I also tested:

->New cable: no response;

->Installed ubuntu 17.04: used "lsusb" and "lsusb|grep Altera" commands, getting no response from the board;

("lsusb" lists all usb devices connected to PC and "lsusb|grep Altera" lists devices with Altera name on it)

-> Reinstalling quartus II 9.1sp2 and still nothing.

3 Replies

  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
    Icon for Honored Contributor rankHonored Contributor
    8 years ago

    You need to reinstall the USB Blaster drivers. But why are you using such an old (8 years) version of Quartus? You might need to use more recent drivers included with newer versions of the tool. You can download the Quartus Prime Programmer for free which will include the latest drivers, including Windows 10 support.

  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
    Icon for Honored Contributor rankHonored Contributor
    8 years ago

    --- Quote Start ---

    You need to reinstall the USB Blaster drivers. But why are you using such an old (8 years) version of Quartus? You might need to use more recent drivers included with newer versions of the tool. You can download the Quartus Prime Programmer for free which will include the latest drivers, including Windows 10 support.

    --- Quote End ---

    Thanks for the response sstrell.

    The problem is: on my device manager there is no "unknown device" or anything with a yellow exclamation mark. When I connect the board to my notebook, nothing happens. Nothing really.

    I'm using this version of Quartus because my teacher told me to use it. No other reason
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
    Icon for Honored Contributor rankHonored Contributor
    8 years ago

    I found the problem!!!

    It was in my board.

    If you see the design of the DE0 board, there are 12 pins on the middle that are meant for LCDs. I recently soldered one in my board.

    The problem here is: the LCD occupies a lot of space on the board and there were some small particles of soldering that where on the USB-blaster circuit.

    So, I just cleaned the legs of the USB-blaster IC and now my board is functioning. Windows detected the board and it's ok now.

    Thanks for sstrell for the response and thanks for everyone else that was trying to find a solution for my problem.