Hi all, this is santhosh. i am not too much into fpga's.... we are utilizing an altera cyclone iii board for a energy meter purpose. We have made a board for the application.i find that in my case, JTAG is working fine. AS mode is fine (shows 100% progress) but not starting the processor. JIC in JTAG mode fails around 70% every time. am trying to flash using flash programmer into EPCS16 (sof and elf) - Fails. I have tried the following the connections on the board are fine i am using 10K pullup and pulldown resistors in case of flash programming, i had the CPU's reset vector point to EPCS Kindly help me out, I am actually fairly new to fpga's... Correct me if i was wrong in any of the above items. I have tried with simple programs also. Same thing happens everytime. I have come to the end of our product development and this is standing right in the middle... Suggestions please. thanks san

it seems like the design is not able to be written into the flash device (EPCS16). "AS mode is fine" - are you doing only programming? you have to do verify to ensure your design is written into the flash. i guess it will certainly fail at verify if you said you can't load the processor during power up. Does loading your design .sof thru JTAG work?

Through jtag, am able to program both quartus and nios. Actually so far I have been testing like this only. AS I have mentioned,I have checked the pcb and all epcs connections are ok. As given in Altera knowledge base,I have changed the multi propose pins to user i/o.kindly guide me in the right direction so that I can get things done soon.thanks

hmm. since you are using EPCS to load your design into FPGA, double check the configuration mode of your cyclone device (it should be the MSEL pins). make sure they are set to Active Serial mode.

I am using EP3C25Q240C8N, i have three MSEL pins 0,1 and 2. I realize i have connected them to gnd. for programming in AS mode what should i connect them to. I read the configuration documentation and found that there are two AS modes some "Fast Active Serial Standard" and "Fast Active Serial Fast". I wish the MSEL connections solve the problems. :confused:

.... Ok so after tying MSEL[1] to VCCA, the AS problem is solved. My second issue is the FLASH PROGRAMMER which comes with the NIOS II Software Build Tools. I am able to now use JTAG mode and AS mode with Quartus II. I usually use the Flash programmer to do a complete programming(Quartus and NIOS code). I do the following, JTAG the FPGA board, write the sof. NIOS II CPU reset vector pointing to EPCS device. Note that in NIOS the all Linker segments apart from entry and exceptions point to sram_0 (2Mb SRAM) open NIOS, generate BSP, build project and the open the flash programmer. Add Choose the BSP/SOPC file. add .sof file add .elf file add offset for elf file based on sof file size and run the programmer. i am getting the following error. Error: Error code: 8 for command: $SOPC_KIT_NIOS2/bin/nios2-flash-programmer "G:/qcon/qcon_fpga_card/quartus/qcon_v0/flash/qcon_v0_epcs_flash_controller_0.flash" --base=0x83800 --epcs --sidp=0x84188 --id=0x0 --timestamp=1347252982 --device=1 --instance=0 '--cable=USB-Blaster on localhost [USB-0]' --program --verbose Kindly help. note: am able to run the nios code from sram using jtag and "run as nios ii hardware" menu.

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Altera_Forum

Honored Contributor

14 years ago

CYCLONE III - EPCS16 - AS MODE and FLASH PROGRAMMING

Hi all,

this is santhosh. i am not too much into fpga's.... we are utilizing an altera cyclone iii board for a energy meter purpose. We have made a board for the application.i find that in my case, JTAG is working fine.

AS mode is fine (shows 100% progress) but not starting the processor.
JIC in JTAG mode fails around 70% every time.
am trying to flash using flash programmer into EPCS16 (sof and elf) - Fails.

I have tried the following

the connections on the board are fine
i am using 10K pullup and pulldown resistors
in case of flash programming, i had the CPU's reset vector point to EPCS

Kindly help me out, I am actually fairly new to fpga's... Correct me if i was wrong in any of the above items. I have tried with simple programs also. Same thing happens everytime. I have come to the end of our product development and this is standing right in the middle... Suggestions please. thanks

san

13 Replies

Altera_Forum
Honored Contributor
14 years ago
hey jacklsw86,... I did the following to compile it rite and the whole thing worked fine.. thanks to all who gave ur valuable help.

1. Make all dual purpose pins as User I/Os in Device settings.

2. Assignments > Device > Device and Pin Option > Configuration > Disable the "Enable input tri-state on active configuration pins in user mode"

thanks once again !! :)
Altera_Forum
Honored Contributor
14 years ago
that's great.

anyway if you are using those pins for EPCS, you don't really need to specifically assign them.
Altera_Forum
Honored Contributor
14 years ago
There u gol.. even i was thinking so.... and thats what is true with a Cyclone II board that i have. The new one is a Cyclone III board, and its not accepting the dedicated pins assignment. So it must be done manually i guess... cos i tried all other things and it din get assigned automatically... :)

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CYCLONE III - EPCS16 - AS MODE and FLASH PROGRAMMING

13 Replies

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