Altera_Forum
Honored Contributor
Honored ContributorProblem: JTAG_CLIENT.DLL missing, DE0_Nano_ControlPanel on Windows 8.1, Quartus II 14
All:
I have Quartus II (14) Web Edition installed and working on a Windows 8.1 laptop. Per the DE0-Nano user manual: the control panel software utility is located in the directory “tools/de0_nano_controlpanel” in the de0-nano system cd. it's free of installation, just copy the whole folder to your host computer and launch the control panel by executing the “de0_nano_controlpanel.exe”. I therefore copied the control panel files from it's directory to a new folder on my desktop. The issue is that when I launch DE0_Nano_ControlPanel (either by double clicking, or by navigating directory to its folder in a CMD window and manually launching the EXE file), a dialog appears indicating that JTAG_CLIENT.DLL is missing (see jtag_client_missing.jpg). Dismissing this dialog brings up another error dialog indicating that TERASIC_JTAG_DRIVE.DLL failed (see terasic_jtag_drive.jpg); dismissing that dialog brings up the final error dialog telling me that Quartus needs to be installed (see quartus_installed.jpg). Again, Quartus II (14) is installed and running perfectly. Searching this forum and the 'net, the only suggestions I could find was to download the latest files from Terasic, which I did; this did not resolve the issue. There was also mention of installing the USB_Blaster(II) driver directly from the Altera installation directory (c:\altera\14.0\quartus\drivers in my case). (I tried both the USB_Blaster and USB_Blaster ii drivers; only the first would actually install. This did not solve the issue.) Finally, here is a listing of the files in my control panel directory (see files.jpg). Running out of options, I tried copying the jtag_client.dll file in the Altera installation directory to the control panel directory; this did not solve the problem. I also tried copying the three TERASIC_*.DLL files into the Altera directory (various places that seemed to make sense, like bin64), but this also did not solve the issue. Any help/direction/suggestions would be greatly appreciated! Dave ------------ EDIT: Sep 1, 2014 This has really been bugging me since I encountered it, so I decided to use the sysinternals procmon utility to find out exactly what was going on with de0_nano_controlpanel. After some tracing/debugging, I confirmed that jtag_client.dll was not being read - or at least that's what it looked like (in spite of the copy I placed in the same directory). A little more debugging (with the dependency walker utility) revealed the real problem: all the dlls supplied from terasic are 32-bit. While these will "run" on my 64-bit Windows 8.1 laptop, they were implicitly looking for the 32-bit version of jtag_client.dll. At that point, I thought I had it solved: simply copy the 32-bit version of jtag_client.dll from Quartus instead of the 64-bit version (which I what I did initially). However, copying the 32-bit version of jtag_client.dll from the C:\Altera\14.0\quartus\bin32 Quartus install did not solve the issue. While there are no longer any missing DLL messages, DE0_Nano_ControlPanel still thinks that Quartus is not installed! My theory is that there is a fundamental incompatibility between Terasic and Quartus in the way that the former checks for the latter. Since Quartus no longer supports 32-bit operation on Windows, this seems a likely scenario: DE0_Nano_ControlPanel is still looking for the 32-bit version of Quartus which, of course, it won't find. terasic: I've done the initial debug/QA for you regarding Win 8.1, 64-bit installs: when will you get around to fixing this? So far I'm definitely not impressed with your QA or the paucity (absence, really) of information regarding this defect on your site. Dave ------------ EDIT: Sep 2, 2014 I thought last night about trying one last "fix", namely trying to determine how it is that DE0_Nano_ControlPanel attempts to determine whether/where Quartus is installed. If I could get that, maybe DE0_Nano_ControlPanel could be convinced that Quartus is actually installed. Using ProcMon once again, I found that DE0_Nano_ControlPanel checks the Windows registry for two values: HKLM\Software\Wow6432Node\Altera Corporation\Quartus Quartus Install Directory REG_SZ C:\Altera\14.0\quartus Quartus Version REG_SZ 14.0 (my install is at c:\altera\14.0\quartus, as shown.)Since these registry values don't exist, I manually added them, supplying the values to match my installation (as shown). ProcMon showed that these satisfied the control panel app, relative to the question as to where Quartus was installed; unfortunatly, there is still a problem. Once the DE0_Nano_ControlPanel has determined the Quartus install location, it attempts to launch: C:\Altera\14.0\bin\quartus_pgm.exe For a normal install of Qaurtus II 14.0, there are only the bin32 and bin64 subdirs under the quartus folder; there is no bin subdir. It is evident that DE0_Nano_ControlPanel insists on finding a "native" 32-bit app on a 32-bit Windows system. I was fairly sure that it wouldn't work (and it didn't), but I thought I'd try one more test: I created a bin subdir under quartus, then found (the only) copy of quartus_pgm.exe available (a 64-bit), and copied it to the new bin subdir that I just created. In fact DE0_Nano_ControlPanel found and launched it, but it is not compatible. So, as the old saying goes: "You can't get there from here." It is evident that the registry trace shows conclusively that DE0_Nano_ControlPanel is "stuck" in the 32-bit world and can't be fooled or forced to work in the Win 8.1 64-bit world until Terasic decides to fix it and bring their small app into the 21st century. As "CalTech" Dave correctly points out (below), the Nano can still be used to test new HDL designs (by direct download), so the Nano isn't by any means a waste. It is, however, a disappointment that Terasic hasn't spent the extra 2 or 3 days of SW dev effort to get the app built for 64-bit compatibility, especially for the sake of the newbs (as I am) attempting to use their product to enter the world of FPGA development. There is nothing more frustrating to purchase a product that purports to work, only to find (after a lot of effort and time) that a SW component of it can't work on my Win 8.1 64-bit laptop - and that with absolutely no warning or assistance from the manufacturer! terasic: are you listening??
Dave
