cyclone iii nios boot from epcs

Gotcha..

I have a little twist...

Trying to program a .pof on the epcs directly, so in quartus I open the Convert Programming File window. select the fpga sof file, and then add (nios) Hex data immediately after (absolute addressing)

However, the nios ide outputs an elf and strangely enough it also outputs a file called, "epcs_controller_boot_rom.flash".

So to generate a hex file that could be used as an input to make an epcs pof file...

if I do this:

nios2-elf-objcopy --input-target srec --output-target ihex input.elf output.hex

it produces a hex file that apparently exceeds the epcs capacity when added after the sof file.

if I do this:

nios2-elf-objcopy --input-target srec --output-target ihex epcs_controller_boot_rom.flash output.hex

Quartus complains that data in hex file overlaps between data blocks at address 1 and address 0.

However, if I do this:

1) sof2flash --verbose --compress --epcs --input=input.sof --output fpga.flash

2) elf2flash --verbose --epcs --after=fpga.flash --input=input.elf --output=app.flash

3) nios2-elf-objcopy --input-target srec --output-target ihex app.flash output.hex

Then it fits and I can program it, but at power-on, the nios does not appear to be running (no blinking led). Interestingly, the nCS on the epcs is continuously toggling. I would expect it to be active only during config/boot and then to stay high.

So long story short, how do you create a epcs .pof file that has the fpga image and nios code??