>>How to repair an Excalibur Development Board?

Are you talking about a real excalibur dev board with an ARM device? Or a Nios dev board?

For Nios dev board, just power the board down then up, open an SDK window, (hopefully you are on later version of Nios) type

ns recovery_configuration_apex_20k200.sof

let it download

then type nr default_board_image_apex_20k200.flash

let it download

this is all documented in the kit.

Tell me if this doesn't work.

if ns doesn't work, you have an old kit. You'll have to open Quartus and download the sof through the programmer.

Hi Kerri,

I think mine was nios dev board because I don't think there was any of a device called or marked ARM® (I think I'm just very very stupid), I only know there was a FPGA has "ALTERA® APEX™ EP20K200EFC484-2X" printed on, and has "EXCALIBUR™ NIOS™ ALTERA®" printed on the back. Then I just followed your instructions, the result is:

device 1) SEEMs okey, but the temp. of the fpga was not right, and couldn't pass the timer test (the basic debug program), others seems right.

after the board's power on and shows me the "ready" signal:

$ nr -t#  2004.10.01 23:17:40 (*) nios-run.pl warning: .../lib/Makefile not found#  2004.10.01 23:17:40 (*) defaulting to serial (-r)
nios-run: Entering terminal mode over COM1: at 115200 bps
nios-run: Terminal mode (Control-C exits)
-----------------------------------------

then I press reset:

(Return address is 0x00000000
-------------------------------------
Welcome to the Nios development board
-------------------------------------
----------------------------------
Nios Peripheral Test
----------------------------------
 MAIN MENU
     a:  Timer
     b:  UART
     c:  Buttons & Switches
     d:  LED
     e:  Seven Segment Display
     f:  Bus & Memory
     q:  Exit
----------------------------------
Select Choice (a-g):

but as I know, it's abnormal, it should show me the second if I have the board pluged and ready.

Abnormal on timer section.

device 2) quite a simple result, doesn't work, the temp. grows drastically and only shows me "waiting for target......" there was no time for its waiting before the fire, and just I could do was unpluged it.

any more tips? or it just dead?

really thx.

hi,

please, i really need help, I'm very stupid but just a very starter.

any tip will be help! http://forum.niosforum.com/work2/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sad.gif

Did you do anything hardware related external to the FPGA or did this just happen one day when you went to program it (i.e. was it running with this design fine the all of the sudden one day you get thermal issues?).

When an FPGA gets too hot some of the internals will not operate properly (perhaps that&#39;s why your timer isn&#39;t working).

I&#39;ve seen someone make a design that got very hot before but he did it using methods I&#39;m surprised quartus let him get away with. I guess check your I/O to making sure your not driving pins to hardwired outputs (Vcc to Gnd and visa versa). I&#39;m pretty sure that device had current limiting too but if you drive lets say 40mA on a lot of I/O then it&#39;ll get very warm. In the quartus project set all unused I/O to tri-state just to be sure (up in the device options area).

Another quick test you can try is to create a new design and route two push button switches through an AND gate and out to a led. Let it stay up for a while to be sure that not too much heat is created (because I&#39;m thinking if the heat issue is internal due to damage, then you&#39;re going to have a short that creates heat no matter what design is in there). Also when you check for the heat either use some type of thermometer that can get at the heat sync temp properly, or if you are going to touch the FPGA make sure you are grounded to the same common ground so that you don&#39;t discharge static electricity into the FPGA.

If you have further questions for me, post them and cut and paste it in an email to me as well because I&#39;m not around much lately so I would take forever to get back to you otherwise (email is in my profile)

Cheers and goodluck (thermal issues are one of the nastiest things to fix in the digital world)