USB-Blaster on Windows 7

Let me start by saying…

I am not one of these people that “has to” run the

latest OS, but I wanted to run a 64 bit OS to try and

speed up the very long compile times I get when I have

a nearly full Cyclone3. 64 bit Quartus made claims of

being better, and I figure that the 4G (3G really) limit

of 32bit x86 was possibly a speed killer for Quartus.

I was assured by the Altera tech sales team that

Quartus 64 bit is the way to the future, so I bit…

Anway…..

----Altera tech support staff: This you really ----

----need to try yourselves to see the problem. ----

Go get a new win7 machine, that has never

had Quartus installed on it, and plug in

a usb-blaster. Be sure that this is a “fresh”

computer – NOT a VM, NOT a computer that

someone un-installed Quartus on, not a computer

that was running anything Altera – ever.

Get a machine that truly has never had

any Altera stuff on it. (because stuff left in the

driver cache and the registry may give you

artificially good results)

Then the fun begins. Go download the Q11.x

programming software and install it. This will make

it so that you can have the "latest" device drivers

for the USBBlaster in your Quartus directory.

Then plug in your USBBlaster. Windoze will do the

“ding dong” and start looking for the driver on the

internet. (FAIL!) – you might want to fix this too

while you are at it – but lets not get ahead of

ourselves just yet. Windoze will not find the drivers,

and will ask you to look for it on your computer.

(or it may just fail out – I forgot / suppressed the

awful memory of this). Windows will then make the

“Something bad-usb wise just happened “d-d-dong”

sound. (It is OK at this point to say a few of your

favorite expletives)

Using the control panel, open systemàDevice

manager. The usb-blaster will be in there with a

yellow mark next to it. Click on it and “update”

the driver. Use the Altera provided drivers in

c:\altera\11.3\programmer\drivers\ (or whatever

the path is, I am doing this from memory now)

Windoze will try and install the drivers and then

give you a bunch of useless errors, and not get

the USBBlaster to a useful sate.

such errors include:

"Cant install device, the service name is already in use"

"Windows cannot find the driver for your device"

"Error 28"

The harder you try to get it to work, the more

the errors you will get.

You will really start to hate the “d-d-dong”

“something bad USB just happened” Windoze sound.

Get used to it. You are going to hear it allot.

Eventually, you will install and uninstall many

versions of USBBlaster drivers. Finally you will find

this forum, read this thread, and install the 7.2 drivers.

You will have to agree that you are installing an

unsigned driver. At this point you will try anything,

and you will be rewarded for your bold and courageous

choice. 60 or so seconds later you will hear “Ding-Dong”

from Windoze, indicating that (finally) something good

usb-wise just happened! Yay! You will then have a

working USBBlaster!

I am very frustrated because this is the 3rd time

I have needed to install the USBBlaster on a 64 bit

machine (ranging from 2 years ago with winXP 64)

I had a BUNCH of tech support calls to 1-800-800-epld

(or whatever the 800 help number is/was) and I had

also had a lot of E-mail correspondence with the

Altera tech support. In that time, no one at altera

had any useful suggestions. My local Arrow FAE: FAIL.

He never once returned ANY of my calls to him.

(I started using Altera products 15 years ago,

before he had graduated from junior high. I guess

I am just not that important of a customer to him.)

Anyway, all I got from email and 800 support was

stupid novice suggestions like "use a shorter usb

cable" and "shorten the length of the 10-pin JTAG

connector" - as well as "reboot the PC" and “un

install and re install Quartus and the drivers"

I will give the tech support line some slack, as this

was my experience 2 years ago with winXP 64, but I was

greeted with difficulties like this on my first win7 install,

(about 1 year ago ) and I somehow got it working. I

am thoroughly disappointed with my latest experience

2 days ago, where I had to install the 7.2 drivers.

At first I was willing to blame myself, but this is the

3rd troublesome 64 bit install I have had with usbblasters,

across 3 different computers, 3 brands of computer, and

with multiple usb-blaster cables. I now see this as an

Altera configuration management issue. Someone at altera

needs to repeat my experiments, and try and install a

usb-blaster on a FRESH 64 bit win7 computer. I bet

after that the next version of quartus will then get the

7.2 "right" drivers.

The thing is, the usbblaster uses the FTDI USB bridge.

FTDI is easy to work with, (I use them in my own designs)

and has supported 64 bit windows for years. Hell, Altera,

you had this working in version 7.2! just carry that over.

OK sorry for the second rant..

---Lou