Forum Discussion

Altera_Forum's avatar
Altera_Forum
Icon for Honored Contributor rankHonored Contributor
19 years ago

EPCS embedded reprogramming

Hi,

I'm trying to figure out how to reprogram the epcs from within the uClinux environment on the NIOS. Has anyone tried this. Is it possible to use the MTD drivers for the EPCS to reprogram the entire EPCS including the FPGA code? Any help would be much appreciated.

Thank You,

Brian Hammerbacher

5 Replies

  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
    Icon for Honored Contributor rankHonored Contributor
    19 years ago

    Hi Brian,

    > Has anyone tried this.

    Yes. jdhar has developed an MTD driver. The code is part of the buildroot sources.

    You can also program the epcs device using u-boot.

    > Is it possible to use the MTD drivers for the EPCS to reprogram the entire EPCS including the

    > FPGA code? Any help would be much appreciated.

    Yes, provided you can create a valid binary file.

    Regards,

    --Scott
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
    Icon for Honored Contributor rankHonored Contributor
    19 years ago

    --- Quote Start ---

    originally posted by hammer42@May 25 2006, 10:42 PM

    hi,

    i'm trying to figure out how to reprogram the epcs from within the uclinux environment on the nios. has anyone tried this. is it possible to use the mtd drivers for the epcs to reprogram the entire epcs including the fpga code? any help would be much appreciated.

    thank you,

    brian hammerbacher

    <div align='right'><{post_snapback}> (index.php?act=findpost&pid=15573)

    --- quote end ---

    --- Quote End ---

    Look at the flashw util in uClinux-dist .
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
    Icon for Honored Contributor rankHonored Contributor
    19 years ago

    The use of the simple tool &#39;dd&#39; can also help - if you have a binary file, you can write directly to the MTD device.

  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
    Icon for Honored Contributor rankHonored Contributor
    19 years ago

    Ok, I tried to take an srec and convert it to a binary to use for DD, but the objcopy in linux couldn&#39;t recognize the nios srec. Is there another way to convert it into something that can be copied using DD?

  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
    Icon for Honored Contributor rankHonored Contributor
    19 years ago

    --- Quote Start ---

    originally posted by hammer42@May 31 2006, 02:52 AM

    ok, i tried to take an srec and convert it to a binary to use for dd, but the objcopy in linux couldn&#39;t recognize the nios srec. is there another way to convert it into something that can be copied using dd?

    <div align='right'><{post_snapback}> (index.php?act=findpost&pid=15696)

    --- quote end ---

    --- Quote End ---

    You should look at the .flash format of altera.

    And write a utility to convert .flash to binary. 

    # Creating .flash file for the FPGA configuration
sof2flash --epcs --input=$SOPC_KIT_NIOS2/examples/verilog/niosII_cycloneII_2c35/standard/standard.sof --output=standard.flash#  Creating .flash file for the project
elf2flash --epcs --after=standard.flash --input=zImage --output=epcs_controller.flash --boot=$SOPC_KIT_NIOS2/components/altera_nios2/boot_loader_epcs.srec