User data in *.jic file

[Altera_Forum]

Hi, there! 

 I got a problem that I couldn't solve, so maybe somebody will help me?  I have a board with Cyclone II (capacity grade 8) and EPCS4 connected to in AS mode. And the only way to program EPCS is JTAG + SFL. The board is working properly and there's no problems with my EPCS programming using the *.jic file and Q-II 7.0 programmer. But! I need also to put a small amount of my own data (256 bytes) into unused area of EPCS to the strictly defined address. And that data is unique for each board to be programmed. And, as you could guess I can use only JTAG. The most evident way to put that data in EPCS is to integrate it into the *.jic file before programming, i.e. at the *.jic generation moment. If we look at the "Convert programming file" dialog in Q-II 7.0 we can see the "Iput files" listbox. That listbox includes 3 sections: 1) SFL device 2) SOF data 3) Hex user data. And the most interesting is 3). But! Any time I assign a file to that section and push "Generate" button I got messge "The file(s) size exceeds EPCS4 capacity". OK, I can understand this - Q-II thinks that my data address is directly after flash device end. So I must define SOF-page end address manually. I set address mode for page 0 (the only page I use) in properties of SOF-data section to "Block" and set the proper end address for the page. But it doesn't work! The same error message again... And I could research why. That's because this setting doesn't really affect anything. If you save convert settings to *.cof file, you'll see nothing about address modes and addresses values in that file. If you open any *.cof file you'll get the "Auto" address mode only, independently of what you have saved in that file before. So, maybe its only the Q-II shell glitch? Let's look to the quartus_cpf.exe command line interface. And again - noway and nohow! There's no ways in command syntax rules to attach the data, to set the addresses etc. So, we have the option in GUI and nothing in executable code...  I tried inject my data in *.jic file directly (in large "FF" field), but its protected from that by CRC or something like this. If you try to open mannually modified *.jic file by programmer, it will hang up.  So I need to get answer to at least one of theese questions to solve my problem:  1) Who knows, maybe quartus_cpf.exe has some hidden abilities for data converting? If yes, how to use it? 2) Maybe file converters of higher versions implement this function properly? 3) Can I use SFL or another IP like SFL to get custom access from JTAG to ASMI? If I will use it, what kind of PC software do I need? 4) Does anybody know about how to modify *.jic file directly and around the protection (i.e. who knows the CRC count algorythm and where is it in the file?)  Any information or recommendation or opinion will have a weight for me. Thanx for reading to the end of post ))