Honored ContributorI have a CycloneII FPGA with an EPCS device and a niosII core that I would like to be able to upgrade in the field without using the JTAG cable. Do I have to write my own application to send data to the niosII so that it can re-program the EPCS or can the nios2-program or nios2-download utilities be used through the SDK shell using the serial port be used.
Honored ContributorTo the best of my knowledge all the Altera tools depend on a JTAG connection so you'd have to write some code that uploads the FPGA image and then burns it into the EPCS.
I'm assuming you're talking about the FPGA code, not the user application, although you can field-upgrade either one from your code. The one thing to keep in mind is that the FPGA field-upgrade is a one-shot deal since there's no way to recover from a bad FPGA image in the EPCS unless you have additional logic like a microcontroller or something like the MAX chip on the Altera dev board. AndrewHonored Contributor> you'd have to write some code that uploads the FPGA image and then burns it into the EPCS.
You might want to take a look at u-boot. You can upload using kermit, y/z modem, tftp, nfs, etc. Then program the epcs using u-boot's epcs programming utilities. Even if u-boot isn't appropriate for your application, you may still find some of its code useful. Regards, --Scott
