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Altera_Forum
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9 years ago

Simplest method to transmit a file to FPGA

Provided that one has a file that is to be transmitted down to the FPGA and it will store every byte into internal or external memory (maximum size is around 1MegaByte). What is the preferred way of ...
Altera_Forum's avatar
Altera_Forum
Icon for Honored Contributor rankHonored Contributor
9 years ago

Hi again guys,

Here's a convenient solution.

Again, I'm working on an image processing circuit and don't want to spend time now messing around with image file I/O.

I'm using a terasIC dev kit with an HDMI TX on it.

The kind folks at terasIC showed me a short-cut to achieve the objective of initializing the SDRAM with a test image file:

1. in Quartus programmer, configure the kit with Control_Panel.sof

2. in terasIC Control Panel, click the "copy file to SDRAM" button, which provides GUI browsing to the file on my PC's drive

3. in Quartus programmer, configure the kit with my circuit.sof

At reset, my Nios needs to tell the Frame Reader to start reading a 1080p frame from SDRAM location 0.

Now I reckon that's a lot easier than implementing my own UART driver!

If I'm overlooking something, please let me know.

If anyone else ever benefits from reading this solution, please let me know.

Cheers --todd