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Altera_Forum's avatar
Altera_Forum
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17 years ago

Remote Update with NIOS and EPCS

Hello,

Currenty I'm working on a Cyclone III to try Remote Update work. I've searched for a lot of information but couldn't find specifiek how to work. I'm trying to work with the altremote_update function and to access that block from NIOS with some PIO's defined in SOPC. With this method I can trigger the reconfiguration but now I want some data back from the data_out. But when I try that with an Input PIO to connect from the altremote_update function and read that from NIOS with this code:

IORD_ALTERA_AVALON_PIO_DATA(REMOTE_DATA_BASE)

When I try this the application crashed, so I'm wondering what am I doing wrong and is the way that I'm working correct?

Another problem is that I can't read the EPCS, I've defined the controller in SOPC and did all the pins in Quartus. But when I try to access the EPCS with this code

fd = alt_flash_open_dev(EPCS_FLASH_CONTROLLER_NAME);

Then fd is empty, so that will tell me that I can't access the EPCS, is that possible because I haven't yet got a licence? (The licence will arrive next week)

Thanks a lot!

11 Replies

  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
    Icon for Honored Contributor rankHonored Contributor

    ok, I was able to flash my epcs using a .jic file and usb blaster.

    then I was able to send a file from the PC through uart to nios and have nios buffer it in sdram and then write the file to flash at address 0. this is working! :D the file type I used was a .rbf and did byte reversal on all bytes of the file. I can power cycle and boot from the newly updated image written to address 0 of the epcs!!!

    The next step is to move the file to another location in flash so that I can have 2 images and use the remote update circuit to do a reconfig to the app image from the factory image.

    The question is, what effect does setting "Device and Pin options" > "Configuration mode" > "REMOTE"

    have on the output .rbf file?

    why do I need to tell quartus that the build is for remote configuration? Should both the factory default and the application configuration files use this option?

    I am not sure why it is necessary if I have the remote update HW in my SOPC?