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Altera_Forum's avatar
Altera_Forum
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12 years ago

sof2flash issue in 12.1sp1

Hi all

Now I'm involved porting some old NIOS2 based designs (built with the 10.0 version of Quartus) from the SOPC builder tool to the Qsys tool (in version 12.1sp1 of Quartus).

When using the sof2flash tool to convert a .sof file to a file suitable to be loaded on an EPCS chip I get this strange error:

[mcesar@localhost nios2-linux]$ sof2flash --verbose --epcs --input=misssi.sof --output=misssi.flash

Apr 26, 2013 11:20:00 AM - (FINE) sof2flash: Starting

Info: *******************************************************************

Info: Running Quartus II 32-bit Convert_programming_file

Info: Command: quartus_cpf --no_banner --convert --device=EPCS128 --option=misssi.opt misssi.sof misssi.pof

Info (210033): Memory Map File misssi.map contains memory usage information for file misssi.pof

Info: Quartus II 32-bit Convert_programming_file was successful. 0 errors, 0 warnings

Info: Peak virtual memory: 121 megabytes

Info: Processing ended: Fri Apr 26 11:20:02 2013

Info: Elapsed time: 00:00:02

Info: Total CPU time (on all processors): 00:00:02

Info: *******************************************************************

Info: Running Quartus II 32-bit Convert_programming_file

Info: Command: quartus_cpf --no_banner --convert misssi.pof misssi.rpd

Info: Quartus II 32-bit Convert_programming_file was successful. 0 errors, 0 warnings

Info: Peak virtual memory: 121 megabytes

Info: Processing ended: Fri Apr 26 11:20:03 2013

Info: Elapsed time: 00:00:01

Info: Total CPU time (on all processors): 00:00:01

Apr 26, 2013 11:20:04 AM - (SEVERE) sof2flash: Error generating Flash file, exiting

Apr 26, 2013 11:20:04 AM - (FINE) sof2flash: Done

This error occurs both in a Windows 7-64 box and also in a CentOS 6.4 box. Old version 10.0 does not have any problem with this conversion. Also, removing the --epcs option from the command line the sof2flash tool works flawlessly.

Does anybody have a clue?

Thanks and regards.

6 Replies

  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    It looks that way... did you try with different .sof files? Are you in a path where you have write access?

  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    Yes, I tried different .sof files and, yes, I do have write permissions (in fact soft2flash has no problems writing some temporary files when launched). I opened a service request at the Altera web and, apparently, I'm not the first one reporting this, although people at Altera cannot, by now, reproduce the problem.

  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    In case it helps shed any light on the issue - I had an issue with sof2flash not working as I moved to another PC that only had the webpack 9.1 tools installed. When I ran sof2flash --help it did not show a --pfl option indicating it was not the full version. When I ran in a nios II 12.0sp2 command window it worked fine. I would check it is calling the correct version.

  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    Thanks for the tip. I've just checked and it does show the --pfl option, so it seems it is a full version.

  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    People at Altera were, at last, able to reproduce the issue.

    In any case, Quartus 13.0 does work properly.