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Altera_Forum
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11 years ago

Problems with the Quartus II software

Hi everyone,

I am a student at the Stenden University in Holland. I am part of a larger group of students who are working with the Altera DE2-115 (Cyclone IV) board's.

We have been experiencing a lot of problem's whit the Altera Quartus II software on multiple versions and operating systems. A majority of the group uses a Microsoft Windows 7/8.1 operating system and one member of our group (myself) is using a Fedora 21 system. All systems are 64 bit (x64).

Here follows a list of problems that we have been experiencing:

Quartus II web edition version 10.1

Windows 7/8.1

- Some of the installations went fine while other installations crashed.

- From the group of students who got the software installed, some could not start the software. The Quartus process went in an unending loop, consuming a lot of CPU power in the process.

Fedora

- the built-in unpacker crashed while unpacking the software. Error: "conf.d", line 1: no element found

altera_installer/bin/altera_installer_gui: sysbol lookup error: /lib/libXfixes.so.3: undefined symbol: _XGetRequest.

Quartus II web edition version 13.1

Windows 7/8.1

- Students where plagued with the "Downloading ELF process failed" error message while following the "My first niosii" tutorial.

Fedora

- The "My first niosii" tutorial worked, but the Nios Eclipse environment was too unstable (the environment caused the system to freeze).

Quartus II web edition version 14.1

Windows 7/8.1 and Fedora

- "Downloading ELF process failed" error message while following the "My first niosii" tutorial

Quartus II web edition version 15.0

Windows 7/8.1

- Eclipse was very unstable

Fedora

- Eclipse was stable for a couple of days but became unstable after a while (same problem as with version 13.1)

My questions:

- Does anyone know a stable version of the Quartus II software or an alternative?

- Does anyone know a good place to find sample projects (HDL design and Nios C++ code). The Eclipse environment has a view samples (Hello World, Simple Socket server, ...) but has no design files which work for these programs. The system CD which came with the board only contains samples which are compatible with Quartus II version 10.1.

We have three weeks to finish our project. Any advice about creating a stable working environment or obtaining working sample code for the DE2-115 board would be a greatly appreciated. At the moment we are using version 15.0 of the Quartus software.

The error log of the Eclipse freeze problem on the Fedora machine has been added as an attachment (Windows line-endings). The error log was obtained from the journalctl service.

8 Replies

  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    11 years ago

    "Downloading ELF process failed" is probably because you don't have aligned timestamp with fw?

    Run with Run/Debug Configurations and Refresh Connections in Target Connection tab to update cache of timestamp after a reconfiguration of FPGA and a BSP rebuild (or rarely if a device with FTDI chip is connected to pc and exchanged for USB Blaster during enum, you can see this with some console command).
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    11 years ago

    I don't know if this is still a problem, but at one point the Altera installers didn't check the MD5 sum of the download. I once had a bad download that installed dozens of files with zero length. After struggling with it for some time I noticed the bad download. After uninstalling and re-installing with a verified download Quartus worked fine. You might check to make sure the MD5 checksum of your install files matches what is shown on the download page.

  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    11 years ago

    Thank you for your advice. We did check the MD5 sum of the linux and windows binaries, they where all ok.

  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    11 years ago

    Thank you for the advice, we knew about the problem with the timestamp, before we posted our questions about it. We always connect the FGPA chip to the notebook when we create new projects. Eclipse also gives a warning when the timestamps do not match.

  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    11 years ago

    I use Quartus 15.0. I have the project with PCIe-core in Qsys. This project normal compile and run in Quartus v.14.x, but when I compile this project in Quartus 15.0 I have the error: "272006 LPM_WIDTHU parameter has been set to illegal value 4, but should be set to value 5". This problem with scfifo in file altpciexpav_stif_cr_rp.v. This file making Quartus from my Qsys project. The same error I see in any sample project from Altera website with PCIe-core.

    Have anybody same problem?
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    11 years ago

    Windows 8.1 is officially supported in Quartus II v15.0. Fedora is not officially supported. I'm pretty sure you should check the supported OS before installing any software.

  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    11 years ago

    --- Quote Start ---

    Windows 8.1 is officially supported in Quartus II v15.0. Fedora is not officially supported. I'm pretty sure you should check the supported OS before installing any software.

    --- Quote End ---

    Hello raimm. I use Quartus II v15.0 on Windows 8.1. I established Quartus II v15.0 Web Edition, but a problem with scfifo remained. This problem arise, when I use Cra registers PCI Express IP.