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Altera_Forum
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8 years ago

A10 HPS not booting from micro SD card - NRST pulsing

Hello,

I have a custom A10 prototype PCB, and I'm trying to bring up the HPS. I am building the preloader/uboot using the BSP-Editor and writing the output to a partition on a micro sdcard (same process I've done on the dev kit many times with success). I never get anything from the UART console output, so I'm attempting to debug what's happening. I have noticed the HPS_NRST signal is pulsing low continuously when there is a micro SD card installed (otherwise it stays HIGH all the time with no SD card plugged in). Any ideas on what is happening, or how to debug a preloader /u-boot that's not coming up initially? Can I get access to the HPS registers to see why it won't come up?

Thanks!

4 Replies

  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    8 years ago

    If the NRST is pulsing, it is probably caused by the Boot ROM not being able find a boot image, thus the watchdog will just wait and then issues a reset. If you have a JTAG connection, you can use a debugger (such as DS-5), loads the uboot directly onto the on-chip RAM (you can use the .ds script that was generated). If this is successful (meaning, uboot is able to run) you probably need to double check your hardware

  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    8 years ago

    How are you getting uboot on the sdcard? I'm having trouble finding documentation for this, for my Alaric dev kit. I have the uboot binary image; I just need to put it in the sd card which already has root filesystem.

    thanks
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    8 years ago

    I am able to program my .sof file through JTAG and when SD card has the HPS related binary files(u-boot generated by BSP editor). I am able to see that HPS DDR is calibrated successfully.

    But when i convert the .sof into .rbf and load it along with the u boot files, my final state is

    emif_reset interrupt is acknowledged (appears 3 times)

    and hence HPS DDR calibration fails.

    How do I debug this issue?
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    8 years ago

    --- Quote Start ---

    I am able to program my .sof file through JTAG and when SD card has the HPS related binary files(u-boot generated by BSP editor). I am able to see that HPS DDR is calibrated successfully.

    But when i convert the .sof into .rbf and load it along with the u boot files, my final state is

    emif_reset interrupt is acknowledged (appears 3 times)

    and hence HPS DDR calibration fails.

    How do I debug this issue?

    --- Quote End ---

    Can you load the FPGA manually during uboot stage?

    We're still trying to get uboot to come up. We have a non-standard uboot process which works when we put it on the dev kit QSPI, but so far hasn't worked when putting it on the sd card.