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Altera_Forum
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15 years ago

impossible to boot ep3c25 from epcs16 - reset_vector problem ?

Hi, I am developing my first niosII design. It works well when I use a volatile programming file (.sof) but I have issues to program the fpga with an external flash. I use : - cycloneI...
Altera_Forum's avatar
Altera_Forum
Icon for Honored Contributor rankHonored Contributor
15 years ago

Quartus 9.1 sp2 is one of the versions that had some problems with EPCS booting. Have a look at this thread (http://www.alteraforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=22441).

I never tried to flash through a .jic file, but it should work still. As an alternative you can use the Nios flash programmer from the .flash file.

I agree that if the reset vector is pointing on the SRAM and you apply an external reset signal to the NIOS cpu after having downloaded your software to SRAM, then the CPU should boot. In some cases I know that the JTAG UART can hang the CPU if no terminal is connected. You could try to remove the UART and just flash a led or something similar from your software to check if it boots. If it still doesn't work, I suggest to use some signaltap probes on the CPU to see what it is doing when getting out of reset.