Forum Discussion

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

[Newbie] USB Blaster on Ubuntu Linux Xenial (16.04) won't probe chain

Hi Folks,

I'm just trying to get Quartus 16.0 (Also tried 15.1) running on my 64 bit Ubuntu Xenial 16.04 machine. I've fixed the permission/udev errors etc and can 'see' the USB Blaster....unfortunately that's as far as I get. If I try to program it times out, and if I try to probe the chain it doesn't like it;

dmarples@steal:~/bin/altera_lite/16.0/quartus/bin$ sudo ./jtagconfig

1) USB-Blaster [2-1.3.1.1.4]

Unable to read device chain - JTAG chain broken

I've tried two different boards, two different USB Blasters and two different cables, in many combinations. I've also tried USB2 and USB3 ports. I'm reasonably sure it's a software problem exacerbated by my lack of capability, so any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.

DAVE

3 Replies

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

    OK, I'd best post the resolution to this in case someone else bumps into it. I don't lay claim to have fixed it myself, onto to have applied a little more Google-fu. The solution was actually from https://www-acc.gsi.de/wiki/timing/quartusinstallubuntu1404. Just in case that page ever disappears, it seems that the problem is due to a missing 32 bit libudev, fixed with; 

    $ sudo apt-get install libudev1:i386
$ sudo ln -sf /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libudev.so.1 /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libudev.so.0

    After this you'll need to rebuild your libs, or just reboot...then, at least in my case, all was good; 

    dmarples@steal:~/bin/altera_lite/16.0/quartus/bin$ ./jtagconfig 
1) USB-Blaster 
  020F10DD   EP3C(10|5)/EP4CE(10|6)

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

    Thanks a lot for this, I was banging my head to the wall for months to solve this, thought it was an USB3/USB2 incompatibility and tried everything, from cable length to USB hubs to forcing USB speed on the bus! Can confirm this works in Ubuntu 16.10 too :-D

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

    ...spoke too soon... it works sometimes with SOFs and never with POFs in linux... but it works always in Win7 running in a VirtualBox VM...