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Altera_Forum's avatar
Altera_Forum
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17 years ago

Programming and booting a non-NIOS embedded apllicatio

Hi, I wonder if anybody have already tried or can share ideas how to load a non-NOIS embedded program into a configuration EPCS device or separate SPI or CFI flash by means of the Quartus/NIOS ...
Altera_Forum's avatar
Altera_Forum
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17 years ago

There is no precompiled code in the EPCS controller to boot the NIOS processor. The module I sent you Instantiates a ROM in the first 1024 K of address space. The bootloader gets loaded into this ROM at compile time.

You don't have to use this method at all. Take the component I gave you and modify it to just instantiate what is needed to interface to the EPCS flash and your processor.

Then boot however you want. Where do you put your bootloader now? It has to exist somewhere right? All you have to do is modify your bootloader to copy the code out of the EPCS flash and put it in RAM. You can look at the assembly source code for Altera's bootloader for help or use the document you referenced "Alternative Boot Methods ..."

On my current project, I continued to use the ROM block inside the EPCS controller for my boot code. But I wrote my own bootloader and used Quartus to specify my compiled bootloader as the memory initialization file for the ROM in the EPCS controller.

Jake