Has anyone used the EPCS controller to hold 100% of your application code? We are pin limited and I was considering giving it a whirl. Any idea of how long the boot loader in the FPGA takes to copy the applicaiton in the EPCS to SDRAM (~512K app)? Are we talking milli seconds or seconds? Does anyone have any pointers or things to consider/watch for? Any info would be great! Rick

I have experimented with this quite a bit Rick, but obviously for development & test rather than an actual real product. The most I&#39;ve done is to put a demo of about 300K into EPCS flash. To my eyes, the startup time wasn&#39;t any worse than having the code in parallel flash and having the boot-loader copy it over.... I am sure that it did in fact take more time but it certainly wasn&#39;t perceptable to me; if you really need to know the time I&#39;d suggest playing with a system where Nios reset to a small on-chip memory that fired off a timer, and then jumped to the EPCS peripheral (to start its boot-loader). Your application could then stop the timer at whatever convenient point you want (alt_main entry, main entry, etc).

I second Jesse&#39;s statement. There is no perceptible delay from hitting reset to the code running. The only problem you might run into is the size of your app. I&#39;m using a Cyclone C6 and my code is under 200k and it uses 3 sectors of the EPCS. You might need a larger device than the EPCS4. I&#39;m told that there are other serial flashes that are pin and protocol compatible with the EPCS series. But, I don&#39;t think the Altera tools support anything but the EPCS1 and EPCS4. Good luck.

I have the same task, but i already build custom board with EPCS16 and IDE tel&#39;s me that device ID is not supported but connection was succesful. So is it possible to make some how hot fix? Is someone knows it&#39;s problem in nios2-programmer or in nios2 system witch dowload SW code to EPCS? tnx.

You created target information for your custom board correct? If not then you need to do that first (need to give a reference designator and flash/epcs mappings). The flash programming guide gives instructions on how to do that.

Yes, i have done custom board project and my board is present in SOPC? BUT in that project for EPCS device used ASMI controller with EPCS1 & EPCS4 support only instead EPCS controller core And when i try to implement my design from IDE&#39;s Flash Programmer into EPCS16 device In console i saw that Connection to targen is OK and ID of target device (ID is correct for EPCS16 ) is unknown But you want to tel me that EPCS16 is supported ? Is it realy true ? Do you check that ? If yes what i do wrong ?

Application code residing in the EPCS | Altera Community

13 Replies

Altera_Forum
Honored Contributor
21 years ago
Yes, that's why i ask to explain - is it possible to make some hot fix for that ?
Or can i get sources of firmware_ROM.hex in flash programming design to try fix by my self?
In fact i don't know where need to fix that.

How i understand the difference between EPCS4 & EPCS16 is only ID and Size
is it true ?
May be need just delete ID check and all or is more complicate ?
For me is VERY IMPORTANT - my project may be stoped.
please help.
Altera_Forum
Honored Contributor
21 years ago
The problem still active http://forum.niosforum.com/work2/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sad.gif

I put to board, using wires, EPCS4 instead EPCS16
An now i can program it using ActiveSerial - so it work correctly

And i try to run my project.................

BUT IDE's flash programmer still not working and trow to console next :

make: Entering directory `/cygdrive/d/ALTERA_PRJ/CYCLC6/lancelot/software/hello_led_4/Debug'
Jan 13, 2005 2:59:51 PM - (INFO) nios2-flash-programmer: Launching Quartus Programmer to download:
c:/altera/kits/nios2/components/AlexBoard/system/AlexBoard.sof
Pre-Reading 0KBytes of data from U2:
|----.----+----.----|
********************* (0.969 sec).
Writing 64KBytes :
|----.----+----.----|
********************* (0.953 sec).
Verifying 64KBytes of data:
|----.----+----.----|
*********************Jan 13, 2005 3:00:00 PM - (SEVERE) nios2-flash-programmer: Verification failure after write.
make: *** [epcs_controller_boot_rom_programflash] Error 8
make: Leaving directory `/cygdrive/d/ALTERA_PRJ/CYCLC6/lancelot/software/hello_led_4/Debug'

What happen ?
Altera_Forum
Honored Contributor
21 years ago
Hi Alex,

So you have physically removed the large EPCS and replaced with an EPCS4 on your board? That tells me that, perhaps, the problem is in the board component you created to tell the flash programmer about your board/flash setup. I say "perhaps" because I cannot remember if the target-board setup utility asks you which EPCS device you have on your board; if that's the case you should re-run the target board setup utility and tell it about your EPCS4.

By the way this problem has not gone un-noticed. I cannot give you a patch/hot fix right this moment but have filed a high-priority issue on what you report and located what needs to be changed in our tool-set.

Forum Discussion

Application code residing in the EPCS

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