Linux USB Blaster Installation

On AMD 64-bit OpenSuse 11.2 on a HP Pavillion laptop about 3 years old I had lots of problems getting USB Blaster to work. I did everything. Followed the instructions of all the Altera documents and added all the USB stuff under the /etc directory. Also played around with jtagd. Spent several hours for a few days I think carefully trying everything posted here.

I have USB blaster plugged into a Cyclone II evaluation board.

Anyway because I wanted to have the latest version of wine I decided to update OpenSuse to 11.4. After that reinstalled Quartus 11.0sp1 and told the programmer to use the USB-Blaster and clicked [START] and WOW!!!! It worked!!!!! I did nothing to this new OpenSuse 11.4 installation. I didn't change anything!!!!! except telling the programmer to use the USB-Blaster.

{ 8/10/2011 A.D.

Ohhh I just ran it again (editing this post). USB Blaster didn't work until I first ran quartus as root. Still didn't work. Then I created the ~root/.jtagd.conf (empty file). Then it worked. It's good to do > ps -ef | grep jtag to see the jtagd demon get created and it's parameters and see if it is deleted when quartus exits. It won't let me ps -9 (die sucker) it until I exit quartus.

}

So if you're using an older openSuse try installing 11.4. Probably good to install it on a separate partition or USB drive if you sysem is already all setup and loaded with stuff you don't want to re-setup. OpenSuse 11.4 video driver was messing up the screen with lots of garbage. Solution for that was at GRUB boot menu there is a spot below where boot options can be added. I added "nomodeset" which causes it to use nv instead of nouveau. Is that the xserver name? Anyway it works fine with that.

Can add the to /boot/grub/menu.lst

By the way first I tried to update OpenSuse from 11.2 to 11.4 which was supposed to work. I followed OpenSuse instructions carefully. After that rebooted and system had lots of problems. But I hadn't added much and I kept my own stuff under /home which is setup as a separate file system to I can reinstall without wiping /home. So don't trust updating OpenSuse.

I hope my USB Blaster keeps working!

-Fred