DE1 board to PC communication

The state machine fills in for the NIOS core that Altera recommends as the manager for the Jtag Atlantic interface through the USB port to a PC host application. The NIOS core is an Altera IP and has cost which include limitations for use and distribution attached. The state machine solution is a small footprint solution free of IP limitations.

On Host side you need to open the Jtag atlantic connection and then you can send ascii strings to the DE board or read strings that the board sends you back. These strings can be command strings etc. I provided the FPGA side and PC code example (vhdl, and C++) for command parsing and for sending responses back to the host with some examples.

Each user can make up his own set and direct the FPGA hardware accordingly. I have a more specific version for one of my FPGA applications. It can set some memory address lines, read status lines (to augment the on-board LEDs and perform other control functions.

Hi dgabbay,

I'm also looking for a simple solution to communicate to fpga over the usbblaster without using a nios II and found your thread. Would you provide some example code of your solution ?

I also wanted to establish a communication channel between board and PC without NIOS II. I was able to use the two following two methods

• RS-232 with about 100 kbit/s

• A simple output pin connection to a Labview board with 1Mbit/s * number of pins used

The second one is a good option if you have a Labview board at hand.

How fast does your communication need to be?

Hi stedu,

I posted the FPGA and PC codes on: http://savant.co.il/business_downloads.html under the download link:

"FPGA State Machine based jtag_uart communicates over USB jtag cable"

I use this link as a slow command interface but as other jtag_atlantic examples show, it can be designed as a fast data link too.

enjoy

(http://savant.co.il/downloads/fpga_pc_usb_interface.rar)

@Pavid

It doesnt need to be quick communication. Its just for configuring some hardware registers on a fpga core by using windows software. I already got two ways to do this. One with a RS232 and another one with tcl-script which i start from the software. I'm not very satisfied with the script solution, but that way doesnt need any more cable for the fpga. So i was looking for something like a .dll which i can directly use. But the only known API seems to be the jtag_atlantic.dll which can just communicate with the JTAG-Uart.

@dgabbay

Thank you for the code :). Check that right now!