Forum Discussion

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

how to control through jtag uart

I'd like to control my board through jtag uart from my original program.

I've found that jtagserver listens network port# 1309 and

nios2-terminal connects to it and then communicates with jtag uart.

Does anybody know how to connect to jtagserver via socket interface?

I've tried to connect to port 1309, but no reaction from it other than greeting

message like below:

$ telnet localhost 1309

Trying 127.0.0.1...

Connect to myhost.

Escape character is '^]'.

JTAG Server

(no action from here.)

Or is there any idea to control through jtag uart?

10 Replies

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

    I don't know, but if I were you, I'd sniff the TCP traffic on your local machine while running nios2-terminal. Then, from the data you could come up with the protocol which I'd assume should be very simple. A good sniffer is Ethereal.

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

    Thank you, wizzy.

    I've had an idea that you wrote.

    But ethereal does not support sniffing loopback interface on Windows.

    http://www.ethereal.com/media.html (http://www.ethereal.com/media.html)

    When I googled sniffing tool for loopback interface,

    I've found a tool called CommView.

    http://www.tamos.com/products/commview/ (http://www.tamos.com/products/commview/)

    It can sniff it!

    It seemed to be serial raw data, but I cannot understand it.

    I might give up doing by myself.

    Regards.
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
    Icon for Honored Contributor rankHonored Contributor
    21 years ago

    Although its not of use to you know we are looking at providing better support for this in a future release; perhaps with a simple C API that you could link to via DLL. This may even be independent of the JTAG uart.

    If you don't mind me asking, can you describe the sorts of operations you'd like such an interface to support? (Reading/writing memory, throughput requirements, any advanced features?).
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
    Icon for Honored Contributor rankHonored Contributor
    21 years ago

    Hello Jesse.

    We are developing product using Cyclone and are investigating

    writing FPGA image to EPCS through JTAG interface.

    As you know it can be achived by nios2-flash-programmer

    for this purpose.

    But there are some Cyclone chips on our board, and we'd like to

    write all EPCSs through only one JTAG interface.

    (see below)

    Host PC

    |

    JTAG

    |

    C1-----C2-----C3-----C4----- ...

    | | | |

    EPCS1 EPCS2 EPCS3 EPCS4

    We have developed a functionality of receiving FPGA image

    from UART and writing it from a Cyclone (C1) to EPCS which configures

    the other Cyclone (C2, C3,,,) by using SPI.

    Is there a way to send data through JTAG uart from my original

    program on host PC?

    If there is, writing procedure will be

    1. configure C1 from JTAG by quartus_pgm.

    (or write EPCS1 by nios2-flash-programmer)

    2. boot C1.

    3. software on C1 receives FPGA image from JTAG uart.

    4. write it to EPCS2 by SPI.

    :

    Best regards.
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
    Icon for Honored Contributor rankHonored Contributor
    21 years ago

    Hi Jesse,

    Will your C API have basic read and set of pins at the JTAG Level?

    We just wrote an app that reads a board's netlist file and generates a pin assignment file for Quartus.

    I was thinking it would be easy to add JTAG test vectors to its abilities since the netlist tells you everything you need to know.

    It would be even better if it could control the JTAG port directly from within itself using your API.

    Thanks,

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

    if all of the cyclone devices are in the same JTAG chain there is no reason not to just use the nios2_flash_programmer. You can specify the chain possition of the device beng programmed. It is also easy to script the programming of the board with a batch file using the nios2-flash-programmer from the command line.

    --Dalon
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
    Icon for Honored Contributor rankHonored Contributor
    21 years ago

    Ken - no, I think I was getting at something completely different. Think of a host-PC running code you compile directly accessing Nios-side memory.

    Actually truth be told I think I spoke too soon on the above.... we kick around a lot of ideas here, but this isn't the place for our product planning to be done.
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
    Icon for Honored Contributor rankHonored Contributor
    21 years ago

    Hi dalon,

    These three chips are not on the same JTAG chain.

    I don't know why my fellow did not apply such things.

    Thanks,

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

    --- Quote Start ---

    Although its not of use to you know we are looking at providing better support for this in a future release; perhaps with a simple C API that you could link to via DLL. This may even be independent of the JTAG uart.

    If you don't mind me asking, can you describe the sorts of operations you'd like such an interface to support? (Reading/writing memory, throughput requirements, any advanced features?).

    --- Quote End ---

    Hi Jesse,

    Found this old discussion from 2004. We have similar requirement - to communicate with NIOS-II via JTAG-UART <-> USBblaster from our own Windows C/C++ program. Protocol is our own: short packets request/response). We could use JTAGserver and socket on port 1309 - can't find any description of socket comm.protocol. You mentioned in the post a simple C API/DLL - that would be even better! Was such API/DLL developed at that time ? Is it available ?

    Best regards,

    Juri Cizas,

    Infineon Technologies