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Altera_Forum
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20 years ago

Why my system cannot boot from EPCS

I can download hardware and software files to EPCS and CFI flash, and my system can boot from Flash. While, after I programmed hardware and software files into EPCS, the EPCS can config FPGA, but...
Altera_Forum's avatar
Altera_Forum
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20 years ago

jonb: The linker settings should reflect your run-time memory (.text included) -- this probably means SDRAM. Place the Nios II reset address (In SOPC Builder) pointing to the EPCS controller; this is all taht is necessary. After building the project in the IDE, use the flash programmer to program the software; this will program everything into EPCS, and it will then be subsequently copied out of EPCS during boot-up.

..what happens is the .elf (with address:data records for everything in your software) is written into EPCS flash. The EPCS boot-loader copies these out to the desired memory location at boot-time.

Remy: Some notes about EPCS:

- Make sure you're using Nios II 5.0. There was an EPCS boot-bug (and patch) available for 1.1 but this was fixed in 5.0

- Nios II software boot from EPCS is not currently (directly) supported in Stratix II; Cyclone & Cyclone II are supported.