USB-Blaster on Windows 7

I am on 64 bit machine , so I'll try this way, I hope works.

Thanks Wombat for replying me.

Hi all,

I have the solution to my problem.

I bought the DE1 board with the usb blaster

the first time it was recognised as usb<->serial

what i did:

download FTprog form FTDI, whit this you can configuer the FTDI chip, also if it dousnt work in quartus.

next you have to check that the vendor ID and Product id are the same as in the USBblaster .inf driver. this values were wrong.

right settings:

costum VID/PID : Costum VID/PID (not FTDI Default)

Vendor ID : 09FB (not 0403)

Product ID : 6001

USB version nummer USB 2.0

Bus Powered

100mAmps

USB remote Wake Up :off

Pull Down :On

Manufacturer : Altera (not FTDI)

Product Description: USB-Blaster

Serial number enabled: checked

Auto Generate Serial No. Uncheched

Serial Number 91d28401

or Prefix : 91

this worked for me (v91sp2)

FIRST SAVE THE OLD CONTENT TO A XML FILE SO YOU CAN RESTORE THE SETTINGS

I HOPE YOU GET IT UP

<RANT>

First, thank you altera FORUM people

for all of your help.

big, jucy NON-THANK-YOU'S to the

altera tech support people who dont

seem to be able to read the forums and

suggest to their manement that they have

a serious issue here, and it is only going'

to get worse as WIN7 gets more popular,

because we have no alteranative anymore.

Second: Wow, what a total fail win7 and

altera make togeather.

Silly me, I bought a new (sucky win7 but

I have no choice!) os computer, and I though

that Altera would have their $hit togeather,

and if I simply installed the Q11.x programmer

surely these windoze 7 issues would have been

resoved by Altera by now.

Nope. 2 days of fighting with it later, and the

only way I got it to work was to use the 7.2SP3

drivers.

Seriously Altera, get your act togeather. I know

that windows sucks, but the people that made my

$150 USB o-scope seem to get it right, and I am

sure you folks have some people that are smarter

than they are.

</RANT>

Worst of all, Windows 8 is just around the corner. Most companies will switch to it and we'll struggle again.

I just attended last week to an Altera exhibition and one of the guys accused me of 'unfair business practice' because I told him I stopped using altera in 2006 and only use the X guys. I didn't recall in the moment why I changed and just after been back home and checking my -many, many- altera based boards I recalled that I was FORCED to switch right after Vista came out.

Wow, that's a top rant. Thankyou.

I looked back through the thread and couldn't find your original problem description I'm afraid. It would be nice to know what problem you're having which is solved by 7.2sp3 but not by 11.0sp1. Thanks.

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

I have windows 7 home premium.

I tried to browse for the drivers as the manual indicated by going to C:\altera\10.0\quartus\drivers\usb-blaster\x32 OR C:\altera\10.0\quartus\drivers\usb-blaster\x64 but that didnt work for me.

I downloaded wasabi_rice's attachment, put it in the "drivers" folder and browsed as above to it and that didnt work either.

Then i browsed the C:\altera\ and windows located the drivers. I have no idea if it's wasabi_rice's package that worked or the drivers are actually located smwh else, I'm just glad it worked :)