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Cyclone V dev. and USB Blaster II

Altera_Forum
Honored Contributor II
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Hi, 

I have Cyclone V development kit version E. 

I have installed the USB Blaster II driver. 

In the device manager i notices that the driver is unconfigured.  

I'm tring to download sof file to the device but after 85% the programmer reports that he can't access JTAG chain , although the device was recognized. 

 

Can you help be to resolve this issue? 

 

Thank you. 

 

http://www.maxplus2.com/support/kdb/solutions/rd01082013_514.html
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Altera_Forum
Honored Contributor II
612 Views

Hello 

Is there a resolution to this as it maybe similar to what I am seeing with the GT demo board - see here http://www.alteraforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=41967&p=178809#post178809 (http://www.alteraforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=41967&p=178809#post178809

 

Thanks
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Altera_Forum
Honored Contributor II
612 Views

Hi, 

 

One piece of information that I didn't see in your posts: what OS are you running on your host machine? 

 

We run USB Blaster II on Windows XP, connected to the target board onto which I want to download. 

 

My experience has been the following using the Chinese-made USB Blaster II devices on XP, which I provide simply as a data point. Note that this experience has also been observed on a Windows 7 laptop.  

 

(1) when you connect your Blaster to a USB port, it should always be the same port (in my case, on a laptop), otherwise XP has to configure a new driver instance for that port and I have to install the Blaster again using Plug and Play; 

 

(2) periodically, I can be ready to download model from Quartus II Programmer, and the download fails because the device suddenly is "not found", as in Quartus tells you that you haven't selected a device, even though it's still plugged in; 

 

(3) I've had several USB Blasters stop working, so we make sure we have several ones on hand, and we mark the ones that don't seem to work. If the device stops working, it could be a problem with board voltage levels that drive some of the signals back onto the Blaster. 

 

Having a logic analyzer to check signal timing and levels on this set of pins from the Blaster is something we have also used from time to time. 

 

In our case, we've got a custom board, and we were talking to early board revs using PS mode, with a Cyc III device. 

 

Hope this helps. 

cheers, 

jim
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Altera_Forum
Honored Contributor II
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Hi 

We are using Windows 7 64bit, in which the driver was loaded from QuartusII 13.1 and seems to be ok although I haven't tried it with Win XP 32bit. 

If I connect an old external USB Blaster to the demo board JTAG header (automatically disables the embedded USB-Blaster-II) it works :confused:
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Altera_Forum
Honored Contributor II
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Hi, Not sure if this is your precise problem. I also had problems with programming file only loading up to about 85% on my own hardware. I solved the problem by Inserting a 22R in series with TCK. The problem is overshoot on TCK. I added more 22 R on all the lines (in series), removed all snubber capacitors to GND, and a 22R between hps and FPGA tdi tdo. Now programming fine even at 24Mhz. Can also try to reduce USB blaster II clock speed.

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