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Altera_Forum's avatar
Altera_Forum
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18 years ago

TSE newbie starter questions

Hey there

I have started working with the Altera tools and some Hardware at my university lately I have a Stratix2GX Board and managed to use the onchip mem and ram and check if everything is functional.

Next step is to work with the ethernet, so i used my SOPC build and clicked some DMAs a TSE builded it and tried the TSE Benchmark template to work on my design.

With this new bunch of code I tried to just get access to my LEDs and let them blink but i cannot get even one line of code working, properly because i don't know where to start. As there was no main method visible at first i created a c file with main to find the one the compiler is using, which seems to be nios_init_rtos.c but as said if i simulate it using Questa nothing seems to work. So I decided to use the sopc file given with the tutorial but same there.

What is going wrong? I'm pretty stuck in my ideas :(

4 Replies

  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    18 years ago

    Well ... your explanation isn't exactly clear. You say you added the TSE MAC and it's necessary components to your SOPC system. There are example designs in the example folder of your NIOS II EDS install. In short, you will need:

    1 - The TSE MAC

    2 - Two SGDMA controllers (one for transmit and one for receive)

    3 - Onchip memory (to store the descriptors for the SGDMA controllers)

    Once you've added all those to your system and connected them appropriately, you'll need to build your SOPC system. Then you'll have to edit your top level project file (Verilog, or schematic maybe?) and connect all of the port from the TSE MAC to the appropriate pins on the FPGA.

    I'm assuming your Stratix II GX board has a PHY on it correct?

    Jake
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    18 years ago

    Your description is very vague. Do be clear if you would like the answer you want.

    "tried the TSE Benchmark template to work on my design." -- you mean the Simple Socket Server sample application or what? I assume you are. If not what it is? Any application note newly published? the UCOSII and Interniche application notes?

    "With this new bunch of code I tried to just get access to my LEDs and let them blink but i cannot get even one line of code working, properly because i don't know where to start."

    -- What bunch of code, you write yourself or what? if you are using the sample application, what you mean it doesn't work? doesn't it compiles? You access the application through the TSE by telnet?
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    18 years ago

    As I'm not a native speaker it sometimes gets pretty hard to describe it i guess. I realized that there was some problem with the ptf file and the nios ide. If I build something in SOPC and i missed a component (in my case it was an interval timer needed for the microC OS used by the tse Ethernet acceleration benchmark) the nios starts compiling and aborts with error 1 @line 0 or something like that.

    At the moment I'm not running anything on the actual board. I'm just simulating in Questa. After I fixed the problem I was able to write and read something from the RAM :) Next thing is to see in the simulation that I can send something through the loop back.