USB-BlasterII mounts as "USB-Blaster variant"
Hello! My company uses the USB-BlasterII pods with Quartus. Many times, when the Blaster is plugged in, it is detected by Quartus as "USB-Blaster variant" instead of "USB-BlasterII". When this happens, the JTAG clock frequency is not settable, and the pod will not operate correctly. The problem occurs equally with Quartus Prime 16.1 and Quartus Standard 24.1. I have not tried other versions of Quartus. This appears to be the same root issue that AdamLevine experienced in a previous Altera forum post: USB Blaster II | Altera Community. To answer the questions he was asked, Yes, we experience this issue on all the PCs we have tried the USB-BlasterII on. My company is running Windows 11. We tried numerous boards, but similar to Adam, the problem occurs whether a board is connected to the Blaster or not. The issue appears to be with the driver for the Blaster and how it is detected when it is connected to the PC. This problem has been occurring more lately than it used to, but we have had significant failure rates with this for the past two years almost. I know our JTAG pin connections are correct because the USB-BlasterII works perfectly IF AND ONLY IF it is detected with the correct device name but cannot work at all if it shows up with the wrong name in Quartus. Our conclusion is that the drivers for the USB-BlasterII have a problem. I suspect that the driver caches the Blaster devices that have been connected and encounters an error if the cache is not cleared by ejecting all the Blaster devices. Just a guess. Has anyone found the issues with the drivers? Is anyone from Intel available to look into this behavior? If not, would Intel supply my corporation with the driver source code so our engineers can fix it? Thanks!
Quartus Dark Theme on Linux - Solution
I have a solution for setting up a dark theme for Quartus Prime 25 on Linux (Mint) and setup a Github repo. The program modifies the stylesheet using a Rust program. https://github.com/saturn77/quartus-dark-linux This repo allows running Altera Quartus on Linux with a dark theme, providing a modern look while being easy on the eyes for Linux users. There are some dark stylesheets for Windows, but those simply will not work on Linux. Quartus's argument parser intercepts -stylesheet before Qt can process it on Linux. This project uses a small Rust LD_PRELOAD library to hook QApplication::exec() and inject the stylesheet directly via Qt's setStyleSheet() API. Tested with Quartus Prime Pro 25.3.1 (Qt 6.5.7) on Linux Mint 22.3 Cinnamon.
error in JTAG server (error code 35) and autodetect (unable to scan device chain) Quartus 18.1
Hello fellow members, I have a Max10 FPGA Evaluation Kit board (10M08SAE144C8G) which i want to flash via JTAG. For this, i have installed Quartus Prime (18.1 version) and have USB Blaster 2 as an interface. After connecting the hardware, the LEDs on the board are stable. When i execute autodetect on the programmer , i get a dialog box stating "unable to scan device chain . Hardware is not connected"(screenshot attached). In the hardware setup , i coulkd see the usb blaster variant is added but still this error occurs. Similary when i try to run the .pof file , the diagnosis show "unexpected error in JTAG server -- error code 35" (screenshot attached). I checked the driver and it seems the USB blaster driver is also updated. On the command prompt, it shows 1) USB-Blaster variant [USB-1] Unable to lock chain - Hardware not attached Has someone encountered this issue before. Any help or suggestion would be highly appreciated. The screenshots can be seen in the attachments. Thanks. Best Regards, Ali
Quartus Eda_Writer keeps crashing
Quartus Prime v25 keeps crashing at the eda_writer step during the flow on Windows 11. I have tried different Quartus versions (II v13.1, Prime Lite v25, Prime Standard v25). All of them crashed at this step multiple times. Is this an issue with the design that I am trying to implement? I searched for this error on Google and I found a message that said it was a bug that was fixed in version 21.1. Strange that its still occuring now in v25 standard. Problem Details Error: Internal Error: Sub-system: WSC, File: /quartus/neto/wsc/wsc_hierarchy_builder.cpp, Line: 1097 m_bp_manager != NULL Stack Trace: 0x48eca: WSC_HIERARCHY_BUILDER::build_map_from_partitions + 0x8a (NETO_WSC) 0x46dd5: WSC_HIERARCHY_BUILDER::build_hierarchy_from_partitions + 0x35 (NETO_WSC) 0x45e1b: WSC_HIERARCHY_BUILDER::build + 0x22b (NETO_WSC) 0x16282: QNETO_START::build_hierarchy_netlist + 0x242 (quartus_eda) 0x28548: QNETO_START::generate_simulation_files + 0x688 (quartus_eda) 0x1a1e3: QNETO_START::generate_eda_files + 0x43 (quartus_eda) 0x33fd0: qneto_execute + 0x210 (quartus_eda) 0xa79b: QNETO_FRAMEWORK::execute + 0x26b (quartus_eda) 0x10b5f: qexe_do_normal + 0x22f (comp_qexe) 0x16fa0: qexe_run + 0x420 (comp_qexe) 0x18012: qexe_standard_main + 0xb2 (comp_qexe) 0x10d17: qneto_main + 0x77 (quartus_eda) 0x12208: msg_main_thread + 0x18 (CCL_MSG) 0x13b18: msg_thread_wrapper + 0x78 (CCL_MSG) 0x15f13: mem_thread_wrapper + 0x73 (ccl_mem) 0x11a41: msg_exe_main + 0xa1 (CCL_MSG) 0x36423: __scrt_common_main_seh + 0x10b (quartus_eda) 0x2e8d6: BaseThreadInitThunk + 0x16 (KERNEL32) 0x8c53b: RtlUserThreadStart + 0x2b (ntdll) End-trace Executable: quartus Comment: None System Information Platform: windows64 OS name: Windows 10 OS version: 10.0 Quartus Prime Information Address bits: 64 Version: 25.1std.0 Build: 1129 Edition: Standard EditionAgilex3 - unknown IDCODE
Hi everyone We are bringing up an Agilex3 A3CZ100BB18A based board where IDCODE is unknown for the Quartus Programmer. Currently the attached NOR flash is empty. This would be the first time configuration. The labels/texts on the chip seems right and correct and the same part we are trying to use. Quartus Programmer has proper access to the JTAG chain, but the IDCODE contains some 0xF nibbles jtagconfig.exe --debug (JTAG Server Version 25.3.0 Build 109 09/24/2025 SC Pro Edition) F36FF0DD (IR=10) Captured DR after reset = (F36FF0DD) [32] Captured IR after reset = (001) [10] Captured Bypass after reset = (0) [1] Captured Bypass chain = (0) [1] JTAG clock speed 1 MHz IDCODE should be 0x4365B0DD As you can see there is only minor difference, only some sub ID’s are wrong. F36FF0DD 4365B0DD I need ideas what could have gone possibly wrong as in documentation I did not find any explanation to this symptom. The JTAG interface seems electrically right. Testing the IDCODE 1000x in JTAG chain debugger of Quartus gives back consistently this very same IDCODE at any startup. Thank you for your help in advance! Kind regards, Peter
Warning at Standard 25.1 by Arria 10
Hi all. recent Queatus Prime Pro 25.3.1 drops Arria 10 support. (no Arria 10 support files in individual download page) But latest Standard 25.1 warns at compile Arria 10 project, by these message Info (24153): Support for Arria 10 devices is deprecated in the Quartus Prime Standard Edition software. For new Arria 10 designs, use the Quartus Prime Pro Edition software. For existing Arria 10 designs, continue to use the Quartus Prime Standard Edition software. Is this due to the difference in release dates between 25.3.1 and 25.1? Will we no longer see this warning when Standard 25.3 is released in the near future?Design Space Explorer - *** Fatal Error: Access Violation at 0X000000001E19EB30
I've used this Virtual PC many times in the past to run DSE, however, after about 1 year and re-trying to launch DSE Quartus crashes immidiately with the following error: Summarized as follows: full report attached below. Quartus Prime Problem Report Executable: quartus_dsew.exe Edition: Standard Edition Version: 18.1.1 Build: 646 Address bits: 64 Platform: Windows 10 64-bit VM: Error: *** Fatal Error: Access Violation at 0X000000001E19EB30 Module: quartus_dsew.exe Stack Trace (truncated for readability): PyModule_GetNameObject (python36) _PyCFunction_FastCallDict (python36) _Py_CheckFunctionResult (python36) _PyEval_EvalFrameDefault (python36) PyArg_UnpackTuple (python36) PyImport_ImportModuleLevelObject (python36) PyEval_EvalCode (python36) PyCFunction_Call (python36) _PyFunction_FastCallDict (python36) _PyObject_FastCallDict (python36) _PyObject_CallMethodIdObjArgs (python36) Full stack trace available in original Quartus crash dialog.
