Hello everyone,
Recently I purchased an Altera FPGA Development/Education Board from eBay. It can be found here (http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/ebayisapi.dll?viewitem&item=271296245565). When I came to Altera's website for additional information I could not find much of anything. My assumption is that this board is outdated. Reason for this is because the chip says, "cyclone ep1c3t144c8n." When searching Altera's website for this chip I could not find any documentation about it. Under the Quartus II software download I saw Cyclone II support and above, but none for the original Cyclone. Am I missing something from Altera.com or am I just screwed with no documentation support from the seller (unbeknownst to me). I have however emailed them asking for a datasheet, but I certainly won't put counting much on that. Does anyone know of how I might go about using the board? As you can see from the link it has a bunch of goodies on it, but I have no idea what pin they are attached too, etc. If anyone is familiar with this board or might recommend me to a board that has similar features but has support/documentation etc. please feel free to recommend. I cannot help but feel I just got bought a bad product this time, but certainly want to start getting into FPGAs and especially with Quartus II software. Thanks in advance & much appreciated, Justin链接已复制
http://newsroom.altera.com/press-releases/nr-low-cost-dev-kits.htm
$49 for a new board with latest generation device on it is pretty hard to beat.--- Quote Start --- Recently I purchased an Altera FPGA Development/Education Board from eBay. It can be found here (http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/ebayisapi.dll?viewitem&item=271296245565). --- Quote End --- I do not recognize this as an "official" Altera Education board; they were UP1, UP2, UP3 from SLS, and then the DE2 series from Terasic. This board is just "a development kit with an Altera device on it". --- Quote Start --- When I came to Altera's website for additional information I could not find much of anything. My assumption is that this board is outdated. Reason for this is because the chip says, "cyclone ep1c3t144c8n." When searching Altera's website for this chip I could not find any documentation about it. Under the Quartus II software download I saw Cyclone II support and above, but none for the original Cyclone. --- Quote End --- The Cyclone handbook is still there http://www.altera.com/literature/lit-cyc.jsp --- Quote Start --- Am I missing something from Altera.com --- Quote End --- No, the piece of the puzzle you are missing is the schematic to the board. Once you have that you can install an older version of the Quartus II Web Edition software, and you're all set. I have many old development kits, and installations of Quartus (in Virtual Machines). Supporting old kits is not that hard. --- Quote Start --- or am I just screwed with no documentation support from the seller (unbeknownst to me). I have however emailed them asking for a datasheet, but I certainly won't put counting much on that. --- Quote End --- That would have been my suggestion ... perhaps post a new message with the question "Does anyone recognize this kit" and put the photo inline in the message. You can also reverse engineer the design. Its only a TQFP device, so you can probe the pins ... tedious, but it would allow you to determine the connections on the board. For example, create a design where all the pins are configured as GPIO, tri-stated by default, and then read all the pins, change the toggle switches one-by-one, and read the pins. Then for the LEDs toggle an output. The problem with outputs is you might damage the FPGA driver, so you might want to probe for the output connections using an ohmmeter. The other thing to try, is to look at the markings on the board, or find it for sale from another vendor and see if they have the documentation. Cheers, Dave
Note that you can warn the eBay seller you will leave bad feedback if they do not supply the documentation that they indicate is available on request.
I needed to do this once for a board, and was promptly provided the documentation promised on their eBay page. Cheers, DaveI've decided to either keep or return the eBay board; pending on how much of a hassle it is. However I did go onto DigiKey and purchase a DE0 Nano Dev Board. Came with what looks like a more modern USB-Blaster programmer (turns out the usb blaster is built on-to the board) and some Altera software for $82.00. I would have gotten the product from Altera at the Academic price but I haven't heard back from Altera this week so being that I am an impatient person I just sucked up the price difference and got a board from DigiKey instead. This product looks a whole heck of a lot more promising than the eBay board by far. The low profile design is really nice and I like how it has an accelerometer built in. Most Dev Boards have the common amenities like LEDs, switches, headphones/mic etc but rarely do I see an accelerometer on a board. There's also a lot of documentation which is a plus.
The seller on eBay did send me a datasheet-type-thing I'm not really sure what I should call it. Take a look for yourself... link (https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=gmail&attid=0.1&thid=141d5fcfbb9fed27&mt=application/rar&url=https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ui%3d2%26ik%3dd40cbb66f5%26view%3datt%26th%3d141d5fcfbb9fed27%26attid%3d0.1%26disp%3dsafe%26realattid%3df_hn0abmgw0%26zw&sig=ahietbsirouofhz4pzgg3muhqdi8tqbyka) is to Google Docs. I cannot make a lick of sense of this mess. There's docs everywhere and many formats of the same file. EDIT: After some digging and organizing the files a bit I did find the datasheet for this board. So I might keep it, better to fry this thing than the more expensive DE0 Nano. :rolleyes:Did you simply return the development board you got off eBay? I've obtained the 'datasheet' the seller was offering. His 'datasheet' is actually the schematic.
Anyway, I've attached it. May mean you are able to put the board to use. Cheers, Alex PS. Forgive me - I see you subsequently found what you were after...--- Quote Start --- PS. Forgive me - I see you subsequently found what you were after... --- Quote End --- No need for forgiveness, as you posted the schematic, which could be useful to the next person who asks this question :) Cheers, Dave
