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Cyclone III development board SRAM revision D & E differences

Altera_Forum
Honored Contributor II
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Hi,  

 

In the past I have been using Cyclone III development board revision D which was produced in 2007. We have a program that asynchronously accesses (write/read) to the external SRAM on Cyclone III development board. Everything was fine on all 5 boards we purchased earlier. This year, we purchased 3 more new cyclone III development board and this time the boards are revision E and we noticed the SRAM parts have been changed on revision E and the asynchronous access are also failing.  

 

Symptoms: 

 

Write 32 bits to address 0 of SRAM as an experiment, we notice regardless what you write to the SRAM, the outputs are always hex "00010001". Tried Altera's suggestions on memory M9K "https://www.altera.com/support/support-resources/knowledge-base/solutions/rd05182010_977.html" Also slow down the write and read access does not help as well.  

 

1) Does anyone have any suggestions?  

 

2) Does anyone know where I can download the "Board Test System" so I can test the asynchronously read on the external SRAM. I followed the link https://www.altera.com/content/dam/altera-www/global/en_us/pdfs/literature/ug/ug_ciii_devkit.pdf, but what I found was just documents and sample tutorial codes.  

 

Thanks for the help.
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Altera_Forum
Honored Contributor II
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When I ported a project that used SRAM from one board to another, I found that I needed to look at the timing requirements in the data sheet for the new boards SRAM chip. I made changes to the code to accommodate the longer traces on the new board and was able to get the project working again. Note that this may have nothing to do with your board.  

 

I'd suggest looking at demo projects made for the old and new versions of your board and compare them with beyond compare or a similar tool. You may find that the vendor has updated the demos to work with the different chip. If that is the case try making similar changes to your code.
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Altera_Forum
Honored Contributor II
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The "Board Test System" comes as part of the kit installation. You can download it from the "Available Documentation" section of the "cyclone iii fpga development kit (https://www.altera.com/products/boards_and_kits/dev-kits/altera/kit-cyc3.html)" page. 

 

Cheers, 

Alex
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Altera_Forum
Honored Contributor II
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--- Quote Start ---  

The "Board Test System" comes as part of the kit installation. You can download it from the "Available Documentation" section of the "cyclone iii fpga development kit (https://www.altera.com/products/boards_and_kits/dev-kits/altera/kit-cyc3.html)" page. 

 

Cheers, 

Alex 

--- Quote End ---  

 

 

 

thanks, that is helpful
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