Re: Quartus 4.2 and UBoot

Altera_Forum · ‎03-15-2005

Hi All,

Has anyone noticed/experienced any problems when moving a UBoot build from

Quartus 4.1/Nios 1.0 to Quartus 4.2/Nios1.1 ?

Only I've got a system that was working fine under the earlier versions, however

after upgrading and rebuilding the sof UBoot fails to correctly boot out of the epcs.

However if I just do a nios-download on the uboot elf it runs fine (just not out of

the epcs). I've noticed that the epcs peripheral size has changed (registers now at base + 0x200)

and have updated this but can't see any other differences.

Regards,

p.s. Obviously I've cleaned the uboot tree with a distclean and completely rebuilt it but to

no avail.

Altera_Forum · ‎03-16-2005

Further to this it seems I can't manually get any code programmed into the epcs to work.

My epcs should contain the sof and uboot (or a test application)

I carry out the following tasks to program the files into the epcs:

@echo "Converting UBoot elf to FLASH file"
elf2flash --epcs --base=0x0 --end=0x7fffffff --flash=U59 --input=u-boot.elf 
      --output=u-boot.flash --boot=boot_loader_epcs.srec 
@echo "Programming UBoot into EPCS on default JTAG device"
nios2-flash-programmer --epcs --input=u-boot.flash --sof=alteradk_flash_programmer.sof  
@echo "Converting FPGA SOF to FLASH file"
sof2flash --epcs --flash=U59 --offset=0x0  --input=full_featured.sof --output=full_featured.flash
@echo "Programming SOF into EPCS on default JTAG device"
nios2-flash-programmer --relocate --epcs --input=full_featured.flash --sof=__NO_SOF_PLEASE__

Now this sequence is adapted from an earlier one that definitely worked (just updated with the new features such as __NO_SOF_PLEASE__)

however when I reboot the fpga it successfully loads the sof and configures but point blank refuses to

run my code. (I've also tried a simple non-hosted led flasher with no success either)

Yet if I download uboot or the led program via nios2-download -g both programs work correctly.

So does anyone have any suggestions as to what has changed in the epcs boot sequence that

could be affecting my design?

Thanks in advance!,

(getting slightly desperate now)

Altera_Forum · ‎03-18-2005

The EPCS bootloader code changed in 4.2 to make it smaller, and I believe there is also a patch.

Search the errata:

http://www.altera.com/support/ip/processor...r.html#idedebug (http://www.altera.com/support/ip/processors/nios2/ips-nios2_devkit1.1-er.html#idedebug)