Honored Contributor
Honored ContributorHi
Ok so I solved the initial issues. It turns out both the blasters I had was broken or something. So we ordered 2 more. Both are Terasic blasters that we got from altera distributors. In anycase things worked fine with the new blasters for some time now and I tested and compiled and uploaded many different programs to the board without problems. But now once again things are broken. We have 2 boards with different problems. On the one board the TDI pin goes and sits at a voltage of 1.5Volts rather than 2.5Volts as the pullup suggested. If we lift the FPGA pin the problem goes away. On the other board the input impedence on the TCK pin went down to 1.x ohms. Meaning the TCK cannot be driven any more. I can find no real reason for these problems accept apparently static. Its not like we have handled the boards alot. What I find disturbing is that my FPGA's seem to die on me one by one :( And then we have JTAG pins connected directly to a header that sits in the open which is apparently not staticly protected. The one board worked fine yesterday and today it doesn't any more. So somehow it broke itself overnight. So only thing I can assume is that something that was statically charges touched the pin. I'm considering putting on either a buffer or some clamping diodes of some sort to try and protect these pins. Can't afford losing alot more FPGA's this way.
