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dim1's avatar
dim1
Icon for New Contributor rankNew Contributor
8 months ago
Solved

Nios V JTAG with Agilex 5

Hello, I am using Arrow Electronics Agilex-5 AXE5-Eagle development kit with a simple NiosV/m design and Hello World application that just prints using printf(). The stdout is directed to the JTAG U...
Nios Cpu
  • BoonBengT_Altera's avatar
    BoonBengT_Altera
    8 months ago

    Hi @dim1,


    Thanks for sharing the response from the jtagconfig, it seems that the frequency are not able being picked up/supported from the connection.

    Highly suspect it could be the USB blaster I behavior causing this, and yes would suggest to use the USB Blaster II which support configurable and faster JTAG frequency.


    Do let us know once you managed to found one and try it out.

    Hope to hear from you soon.


    Best Wishes

    BB


BoonBengT_Altera's avatar
BoonBengT_Altera
Icon for Moderator rankModerator
8 months ago

Hi @dim1,


Thank you for posting in Intel community forum and hope all is well.

Could you help us to understand further on the environment (i.e., OS) that you have and which version of quartus you are having?


As for the comment on the 2 question you have as below:

1. What should I try in order to resolve the above red lines?

- The message are just a warining and not fatal error which could be reason such as USB blaster or Askling GDB server instabilities. Since the connection works and debugging are functioning, we can ignore for now.


2. While debugging works, it is kind of slow - for example making a step takes 4-5 seconds. Is this the expected speed for a single debug step?

- Maybe the actual issues where some JTAG settings are failing or program buffer limits. Would suggest to force the JTAG frequency from Askling IDE manually via CLI (i.e., --jtag-freq 16000 or using .ini/config override). Also perhaps to check on the quartus programmer JTAG test by running quartus_pgm --auto with a .sof file and see if it reports a JTAG frequency. Last but not least try running the jtagconfig --debug to confirm the actual JTAG frequency or failure to set it


Hope that clarify


Best Wishes

BB


dim1's avatar
dim1
Icon for New Contributor rankNew Contributor
8 months ago

Hi BB,

Thank you for your response.

At the moment I am using Quartus Prime Pro, 24.3.1, on Windows 10.

I am going to try with Quartus Prime Pro 25.1 as well.

I tried quartus_pgm and jtagconfig, but neither reports JTAG frequence. For example, for jtagconfig:

[niosv-shell] C:\intelFPGA_pro\24.3.1\quartus\bin64> jtagconfig --debug
1) USB-Blaster [USB-0]
(JTAG Server Version 24.3.1 Build 102 01/14/2025 SC Pro Edition)
0364F0DD A5E(C065BB32AR0|D065BB32AR0) (IR=10)
Design hash FB2EBE61EF52C558ABA3
+ Node 08986E00 Nios V #0
+ Node 0C006E00 JTAG UART #0

Captured DR after reset = (0364F0DD) [32]
Captured IR after reset = (001) [10]
Captured Bypass after reset = (0) [1]
Captured Bypass chain = (0) [1]

I noticed that the Ashling tools are referencing/looking for USB Blaster II. At the moment I am using USB Blaster (not USB Blaster II). Could this be the reason for not being able to set/see JTAG Frequency and the slow debugging speed?

I do not have USB Blaster II at the moment to try with, but will try to find one.

Thank you,

d.