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Waghlis's avatar
Waghlis
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3 years ago

Problem extracting the program / current configuration of the Altera Max7000s FPGA on a card.

In wanting to extract the current program / configuration contained in an ALTERA MAX7000S FPGA on a card equipped with a JTAG port, and this for possible use on another FPGA, I did not find any indication of downloading, reading or saving of the current configuration on the Quartus II software interface (13.0). Please can you guide me to solve this problem? Thanks.

3 Replies

  • _AK6DN_'s avatar
    _AK6DN_
    Icon for Frequent Contributor rankFrequent Contributor
    3 years ago

    Not possible to do with the available version of QuartusII (13.0sp1) that supports the MAX7000S series.

    Reading the device image is not supported in that software, it was only available in much earlier versions that are no longer online.

    It can be done with a third party device programmer (EEtools, Xeltek, etc) with the appropriate adapters.

    Assuming that the security bit is not set, however. If it is you cannot read the device under any condition, only erase and reprogram.

    For reference, I have Quartus 13.0sp1 on my Win10 system, and both Quartus 9.1sp2 and Quartus 6.1 on my Win7 system, and none of them can read back the program in my EPM7064SLC44-10 device. They all can program and verify it fine with a USB BlasterII, just not examine/read it. My understanding is you need to go back to MaxPlus2 (tool generation before Quartus) to get read back functionality. I don't have any MaxPlus2 s/w.

  • WZ2's avatar
    WZ2
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    3 years ago

    Yeah. Max7000 is too old to be supported by Quartus 13


    • _AK6DN_'s avatar
      _AK6DN_
      Icon for Frequent Contributor rankFrequent Contributor
      3 years ago

      True, MAX7000 is not supported in QuartusII 13.0sp1, but the OP referred to MAX7000S which IS supported.

      However, that Quartus version does NOT support reading the programmed image out of the device.

      Even Quartus versions as far back as 6.1 (which I still have) do not support reading the MAX 7K series parts.

      Third party programmer is the only option to attempt to recover an image from a programmed device.