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Altera_Forum's avatar
Altera_Forum
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16 years ago

the problem of programming the PCIe pex_exmaple_design

Hi everyone, I'm trying to program a stratix ii gx . According to the user

guide,i used two pcs connected by the usb blaster to download the

pex_example_design which generated by the pci_express_compiler-v2.1.0.

but when I reboot the system in order to recognize the board, the PC

hangs forever. Do you have any idea about what it could depend on?

Thanks in advance.

4 Replies

  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    16 years ago

    Hey,

    If you have top-level pins you have not assigned yet, make sure they are not being assigned by the fitter to pins connected to the PCIe slot. Try disconnecting and grounding the transmit pins. From here it mostly depends on what interface you are using. I use DDR with an Arria GX, and the cpu boots and the core is recognized by the command "lspci" as long as I assert the acknowledge pin on any incoming requests. I think for Avalon ST you have to be sure to assert the ready pin on the transmit ST interface. Oh, make sure your resets are handled correctly, according to the compiler guide in chapter 5: signals. Does any of this help?
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    16 years ago

    hi,thank you for your suggestion.i used the ram on-chip,and assigned the pins as the kits example,while the kits example can be programmed correctly.what's more, the PCI Express High Performance Reference Design Provided by Altera has the same top-level pins and assigned just as i did,while the reference design can work correctly. what should i do?

  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    16 years ago

    Use a text editor to open up the quartus settings file (*.qsf) of your project and of the PCI Express High Performance Reference, and compare the two. There may be assignments in the reference design that may help your own project.

    Also, what Quartus version are you using? My Arria GX development board came with Quartus 7.2, and the reference design was written in 7.2 as well. However, whenever I attempted to duplicate the reference design in 8.0 or 8.1, I would experience multiple problems with my computer at startup. I very much recommend using the latest versions of Quartus, as bugs that appear in earlier versions have since been fixed. Try designing a project in Quartus 9.0.
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    16 years ago

    i use quartus version 7.2,too. and now the problems have been already solved. that's because i didn't deal with the unused pins on the device.

    thank you for all your kind help and useful suggestions:)