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Chansit's avatar
Chansit
Icon for New Contributor rankNew Contributor
3 years ago

How to reset the ALTERA Cyclone II after loss communication during firmware upgrade?

Hi Every one,

My colleague lost communication due to a USB port problem during the upgrade firmware for ALTERA Cyclone II via USB Blaster by the Quartus II programmer and then we try to upgrade again but have an error message that can't erase a file inside the chipset and can't do anything with it.

The detail that we set up in the Quartus II programmer is as below.

Hardware: USB Blaster

Mode: Active Serial Programming

Device: EPCS4

Could anyone suggest a solution for fixing this problem, please?

Thank you in advance for your help.

2 Replies

  • ak6dn's avatar
    ak6dn
    Icon for Regular Contributor rankRegular Contributor
    3 years ago

    With the attached external EPCS4 device on a Cyclone II, you can use the USB blaster to download the .sof; the SRAM based program image that resides INSIDE the Cyclone II. The external EPCS4 can be absent or blank when you do this.

    If your Cyclone II image is correct, it should then have the Altera serial flash loader module in your design. For example, my CycloneII board with an attached EPCS4 device has this in its program image:

       // Altera Serial Flash Loader module

    // Allows external JTAG access to the serial config eeprom for programming

    sfl	sfl
	( .asdo_in		(1'b0),		// not used
	  .dclk_in		(1'b0),		// not used
	  .ncso_in		(1'b0),		// not used
	  .noe_in		(1'b0),		// always enabled
	  .asmi_access_granted	(1'b1),		// external JTAG access always
	  .asmi_access_request	(),		// not used
	  .data0_out		()		// not used
	  );

    So if the Cyclone II is unprogrammed, ONLY the Cyclone II device will show up in the JTAG chain using Quartus programmer.

    Once you download a .sof image to the Cyclone II that has the above code in it, the JTAG chain will now also show the EPCS4 (virtual) JTAG device.

    And then you can program the EPCS4 device with a new image, reset the board, and it should boot from the EPCS4 (assuming you have the correct serial boot mode setup selected).

  • NurAiman_M_Intel's avatar
    NurAiman_M_Intel
    Icon for Super Contributor rankSuper Contributor
    3 years ago

    Hi,


    Did you follow the suggestion from our friend? I hope you can move forward with your design.


    We do not receive any response from you to the previous answer that I have provided. This thread will be transitioned to community support. If you have a new question, feel free to open a new thread to get the support from Intel experts. Otherwise, the community users will continue to help you on this thread. Thank you


    Regards.

    Aiman