Bittware S5PH-Q 14.0 flash issue

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Hi all,

I have recently upgrade my Bittware card to Quartus 14.0 which previously had 13.1.3. I was able to successfully install the BSP and flash the board with the Bittware provided top.rbf using Bittworks. However, when I did a hard reset, my system will no longer boot. I get nothing.

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Has anyone successfully flashed this particular board?

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Rudy, I have spent many hours trying different permutations of settings and even different versions of the Altera SDK, and with various Bittware BSP packages. I learned today that if you load the Ver 14.0 top.rbf file with the ""Compressed" box unchecked (it is checked by default and in spite of what the Bittware docs say), then after cycling power my system finally booted ok (before it would not even post).

I am now running Ver 14 of the Altera SDK; "aocl diagnose" worked just fine for my board.

KEEP IN MIND that I am running WINDOWS 7 ! This procedure may or may not work for you but will at least give you another option to think about.

Hope it helps.

Bruce,

Thanks for the reply. I was able to flash and boot on Windows 7 using the Bittware's documentation but I will keep you solution in mind.

Are you saying that when you flashed using Bittware's top.rbf 14.0 that your machine wouldn't boot either? I'm currently working with Bittware on a solution and feel it would be necessary to report another incident of this happening.

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Bruce,

Thanks for the reply ...

Are you saying that when you flashed using Bittware's top.rbf 14.0 that your machine wouldn't boot either? I'm currently working with Bittware on a solution and feel it would be necessary to report another incident of this happening.

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Hi Rudy,

Yes that's right. Carlos at Bittware actually suggested this so I think they are aware of it, but only as of today. While I was on the phone with him he got a message about this from the Altera folks.

In case it helps, this has taken a while to get working: I am using the ASUS Rampage IV Extreme Motherboard (supports multiple GPUs and is popular with gamers) and with a Hex-Core CPU (Intel Core i7-3930K) I could not get the system to post at all using Windows 7. Bittware let me know that another customer got this Motherboard to work using the quad-core Intel Core i7-4820K CPU to work, so I ordered one of those, popped it in, then it booted using the Altera Ver. 13.1 SDK.

Bittware found a fix to the Hex-core case by reprogramming the firmware of the S5PHQ, which I just got around to doing today. So to be honest, I don't know if it was the firmware update or the non-compressed loading option of the top.rbf file under version 14.0.

In any case, Ver 14.0 seems to be working, I got the Hello World example to build and run earlier this evening.

Stay in touch.

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I am having this issue. Board worked under 13, but now it is bricked after installing the top.rbf for v14. I am using Win 7, and the computer doesn't boot with the board installed. Is there a way to keep the flash from loading on boot? Because it never even displays the bios message. I'm thinking of powering using a computer that doesn't need to boot and re-flashing using usb

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Ok that happened to me too, your system is not Posting. Here is what I did: power down the computer, remove the board from the PCI bus, connect a power cable from the motherboard to the FPGA board. Now you have a dangling FPGA card so be careful; I recommend that if you have an extra slot in your PC case, that does NOT allow the board to connect to the PCI bus, place it in this empty slot just for now. Next, connect the micro-USB cable from your computer back to the FPGA board, power up your computer. Your computer should now boot, afterward, start the BWCONFIG utility, you should be able to erase the top.rbf file that you previously loaded. Finally, power-cycle your system (not just restart), power-down then place back in the PCI slot and it should boot ok.

Bruce,

Your solution about deselecting "compress" during the flash process worked. My linux box booted up. I am still having issues compiling to the board though so I am trying to work through that. I also heard back from Carlos and he mentioned that the getting started guide is wrong. You should not select "compress" when flashing the board. Hopefully that gets updated soon.

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Your solution about deselecting "compress" during the flash process worked. My linux box booted up. I am still having issues compiling to the board though so I am trying to work through that. I also heard back from Carlos and he mentioned that the getting started guide is wrong. You should not select "compress" when flashing the board. Hopefully that gets updated soon.

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Ok thats great. I started with the "Hello World" Example and that worked. Since then I have gotten the Altera 2d-FFT examples to work. What sort of problems are you having?

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Ok that happened to me too, your system is not Posting. Here is what I did: power down the computer, remove the board from the PCI bus, connect a power cable from the motherboard to the FPGA board. .

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After looking for a power cable and failing (modular power supplies are not always the best) I ended up finding an old computer to power the board and erased the flash over usb. When I reloaded top.rbf with "compressed" deselected, aocl diagnose found the board. So I will test the demo tomorrow, but it's a step forward, thanks.

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Ok thats great. I started with the "Hello World" Example and that worked. Since then I have gotten the Altera 2d-FFT examples to work. What sort of problems are you having?

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Bruce,

I get an internal comipler error. When I look at the first error in the quartus_sh_compile.log, it tells me

"Current license file does not support partial reconfiguration. The Quartus II software automaticall disabled partial reconfiguration support on all partitions"

I spoke with Bittware and they said this is an issue with the quartus.ini file. They gave a known good quartus.ini file to compare with the one located in $AOCL_BOARD_PACKAGE_ROOT/hardware/s5_ref. The files are identical.

Any tips?

I was able to get hello_world to compile and run for another board vendor.