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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

Hi,

I have recently solved the problem I put to discussion in this thread, though meanwhile without using an Altera configuration EPCS device.

Because of lack of time for the project, it turned out to do it quicker with a separate SPI flash device serving only for booting the application code, while the EPCS flash is used only for the FPGA configuration as before.

I just took an Altium SPI core with the wishbone interface which is directly connectable to the TSK3000 processor having the same interface. Of course, I had to code the flash driver as well as procedures for writing to the flash and booting from it.

As to utilising the EPCS controller (with the configuration flash) for this purposes, it would have been to me much more time-consuming, since its description is very brief to allow writing drivers for different processors than NIOS. There's, though, a source code of Altera's driver for the EPCS controller in Quartus, but it is in NIOS assembly language and its reengineering for another processer would require time.

valmar