Notes

  • EDA - Electronic Design Automation
  • Altera Quartus (now owned by Intel)

Hardware

Altera DE1

  • Don't need the 7.5V power supply - Can power off the USB port
  • FPGA: Cyclone II - EP2C20F484C7N

Software

Quartus II

  • Version 13.0sp1 (13.0.1.232)

    • Linux mirror (Intel site doesn't work)
    • Last version that supports the hardware (Cyclone II FPGA)

  • I made a Docker image to get Quartus II working on Linux

USB Blaster

The USB Blaster is the driver to communicate with these boards.

On Linux, if you run into the following error

1
2
3
4

$> quartus_pgm --auto
Info (213045): Using programming cable "USB-Blaster variant [1-9]"
1) USB-Blaster variant [1-9]
  Unable to lock chain (Insufficient port permissions)

You'll need to kill the jtagd process and run it as root (or write your udev rules)

Programming the Board

  • RUN - Program operation mode
  • PROG - Programming mode (for active serial programming)

JTAG and Active Serial

  • JTAG programming is temporary, and only keeps the program whilst powered on
    • JTAG programming can be run on either RUN or PROG mode
    • Use the .sof files
  • Active Serial programming will write the program into the onboard flash (persist)
    • Use the .pof files

Manuals