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Altera_Forum's avatar
Altera_Forum
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14 years ago

found.srec not detected

Hi, I was working on testing some things on the NIOS II on a DE2 board. It was working fine when I ran it as hardware. Suddenly it stopped working and this error message would flash in the cons...
ArturKlauser's avatar
ArturKlauser
Icon for New Contributor rankNew Contributor
3 years ago

It's 2022, and the problem persists (Quartus 21.1.1) - I just ran into it as well and spent some time root causing it.

Short story: Make sure you include a "System ID Peripheral" (SIDP) in your Nios2 platform design!

Long story:

  • Assuming you have a Qsys (Platform Designer) already that shows this problem.
  • Open "Nios2 Software Build Tools for Eclipse" from Quartus -> Tools, aka. eclipse-nios2 from the command line.
  • Create a new run configuration (Run -> Run Configurations -> Nios2 Hardware) and configure its "Target Connection -> Refresh Connections" to make sure it detects your attached development board.
  • Hit "System ID Properties"
    • If you do have a SIDP in your design:
      • Expected system ID base address: 0x1234 (whatever address you gave it in your design)
    • If you don't have a SIDP in your design:
      • Expected system ID base address: Not Found - does that start to ring a bell?
  • Close that "System ID Properties" window
  • If you hit "Run" now, the following happens under the covers (this is on a LInux system, but I'm fairly certain the same applies to Windows since it's driven by application logic in the eclipse-nios2 Java app):
    • If you do have a SIDP in your design:
      • eclipse-nios2 calls nios2-download
        • /bin/bash /home/quartus/../nios2eds/bin/nios2-download --cable=USB-Blaster on localhost [1-2] --device=1 --instance=0 --go --sidp=0x1234 --id=0xabc --timestamp=1234567890 /home/work/NIOS/software/NIOS_test/NIOS_test.elf
        • nios2-download calls nios2-elf-objcopy
          • /bin/bash /home/quartus/../nios2eds/bin/gnu/H-x86_64-pc-linux-gnu/bin/nios2-elf-objcopy /home/work/NIOS/software/NIOS_test/NIOS_test.elf -O srec /home/work/NIOS/software/NIOS_test/NIOS_test.elf.srec
      • So far so good, that works as expected and the software download succeeds.
    • If you don't have a SIDP in your design:
      • Note that you'll probably have to check "Target Connection -> System ID Checks -> Ignore mismatched system ID" and "... -> Ignore mismatched system timestamp" in order to "Run" the configuration at all.
      • eclipse-nios2 calls nios2-download
        • /bin/bash /home/quartus/../nios2eds/bin/nios2-download --cable=USB-Blaster on localhost [1-2] --device=1 --instance=0 --stop --accept-bad-sysid --sidp=Not Found
        • That is a bogus command line. The SIDP is set to "Not" and "Found" is taken as an .elf file that has to be sent to the board.
        • nios2-download calls nios2-elf-objcopy
          • /bin/bash /home/quartus/../nios2eds/bin/gnu/H-x86_64-pc-linux-gnu/bin/nios2-elf-objcopy ./Found -O srec ./Found.srec
          • nios2-elf-objcopy obviously can't find the "Found" file, prints the error message we've all seen flash by
            nios2-elf-objcopy: './Found': No such file
            ./Found.srec: Unable to open input file
            rm: cannot remove './Found.srec': No such file or directory
            and exits with an error exit code.

Considering the age of this thread, that bug has been around for at least 11 years now, still unfixed!