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Altera_Forum
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11 years ago

Installation of USB-Blaster Driver DE2 board programming with Quartus II 12.0 or13.0

Earlier I installed the driver in a DE1 board and it worked fine. I used Quartus II 5.0 provided in Cd-s along-with the board. Now license for it is not available. I was suggested to download it from the site. Now to install the USB-Blaster driver in a DE2 board for the first time use I followed the tutorial tut_initialDE2.pdf made the connections did the power on. But "Found New Hardware Wizard" did not open up. In the control panel I found the icon for unknown device. Then I followed the steps given in DE2_UserManual.pdf available in the CD provided with the DE2 kit.

I can reach to the window given in the screen shot. It is showing no hardware and the start button is inactive. Checksum is also different. So I could not install. The file DE2_USB_API is not located in the installation path. Is this creating a problem?

7 Replies

  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    11 years ago

    Does the Icon for unknown device disappered in the device Manager (the USB Blaster should show up as a device under "USB Controller")?

    If you click on "Hardware Setup" in the programmer window does the USB Blaster show up (you need to choose it once to indicate which programmer to be used, even if there is just this one connected). If the USB Blaster shows up in the device manager but not in the programmer window, the JTAG Server seems to fail. There was a Problem with the Installation files for the IIRC 12.x Quartus Version if used as WebEdition on 64Bit OS. The webEdition was the 32Bit Version with the JTAG Server not starting under 64Bit OS. But this was fixed with 13.x...
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    11 years ago

    --- Quote Start ---

    Does the Icon for unknown device disappered in the device Manager (the USB Blaster should show up as a device under "USB Controller")?

    If you click on "Hardware Setup" in the programmer window does the USB Blaster show up (you need to choose it once to indicate which programmer to be used, even if there is just this one connected). If the USB Blaster shows up in the device manager but not in the programmer window, the JTAG Server seems to fail. There was a Problem with the Installation files for the IIRC 12.x Quartus Version if used as WebEdition on 64Bit OS. The webEdition was the 32Bit Version with the JTAG Server not starting under 64Bit OS. But this was fixed with 13.x...

    --- Quote End ---

    The unknown device does not disappear in the device manager even when the cable is disconnected. I have attached the screen-shot as device_manager.jpg. This shows up as two devices when any one is clicked it shows that the drivers are not installed. Under USB Controller the device does not show up. I have attached another screen-shot.

    If I click "Hardware Setup" in the programmer window the USB Blaster does not show up. Previous post's screen-shot. I tried with both Quartus II 12.0 and 13.0. Both are giving same problems. Now I am trying to install the driver in the device manager. I tried to install it from Quarus II 13.0sp1-->quartus-->drivers-->usb-blaster. But required files are not there as prompt shows.

    Thanks a lot for your help. If you can suggest any document that explains what this driver does, it will be of great help. In a CD, there are drivers for DE2 and in the installation folder there are drivers for quartus II. I am not getting which folder to use.
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    11 years ago

    In continuation to my first post I want to add one info. I repeated the steps without any hardware connection. I have got the same screen as given in the attached thumbnail in the 1st post. Checksum remains the same.

  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    11 years ago

    if the devices do not dissapear with the DE2 board unconnected it would indicate these are not necessarily caused by the QII Installation. Assuming they appeared same time with the Installation, they should...

    If you miss the driver files in QII Installation Directory (\13.0sp1\quartus\Drivers\usb-blaster should contain a "usbblstr.inf") an option might be to install the standalone programmer edition of quartus which contain drivers.

    For the programmer window - as long as the USB-blaster is not installed, recognized and "made useable" by Windows, the QII window cannot list the device under Hardware Setup.

    Regarding the checksum - this should in either case show the checksum of the *.sof you select by add or Change file, so your's "it is different" refers to?
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    11 years ago

    Finally a success!!!!!! I could install through the device manager. I am still keeping my finger crossed to download an sof for programming the FPGA.

    Your points: The new device disappeared from the control panel. But it was there in the device manager.

    Without the installation or without any connection it shows the FPGA cyclone II device but not the usb-blaster in the opened window when tools/programmer is clicked in Quartus II.

    Regarding the checksum - if it only depends on the file how can I get a different checksum? I do not understand this.

    Thanks a lot for your detailed analysis.
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    11 years ago

    Without connection the programmer window cannot show any Hardware as none is connected ;-)

    Regarding the checksum - this is generated based on the code you wrote, the target device etc. thus it is identical if you recompile w/o changes to the code etc. but it will change any time you change your code. Additionally to this autogenerated checksum you can also assign a usercode that does not change automatically but can e.g. be used for manual revsion identifier etc.
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    11 years ago

    Tremendous communication gap took place. If you are interested I'll explain again.

    Thanks