Multiple JTAG control

[Altera_Forum]

Hi, 

Is it possible to use a single NIOS II IDE to control two independant JTAG/USB-blaster based systems? (for example use USB port 1 to control one system and use USB port 2 to control another system).   Same code/system will be running in both systems.   Can we run two instances of IDE on a PC? (instead of using two PCs).   Any help to avoid plug-out/plugin of USB cable will be much appreciated.   Thanks.   Ravi.

[Altera_Forum]

you should be able to run two ide instances.

[Altera_Forum]

I get an error message when I tried to start the second instance. 

 It says "Workspace in use or cannot be created, choose a different one." So, I made a copy of the whole workspace directory and started the second instance of IDE pointing it to this copy of workspace, the second instance of IDE came up. However, neither IDE could see any of the USB/JTAG blaster device.   I am running IDE v 7.1 on Windows XP using two identical Terasic Blaster USB JTAG link devices.   Ravi.

[Altera_Forum]

Using multiple JTAG adapters or even accessing different JTAG devices on a single JTAG chain with multiple Quartus instances works reliably. Thus I'm sure, that the underlying Quartus JTAG driver stack can handle it. The question is, how you select the programming hardware in the NIOS IDE and where the tool stores this information. It may use a method (e.g. global registry data), that doesn't work with multiple instances. I'm not using NIOS, so I can't check.

[Altera_Forum]

Doesn't work here. 

 Plug in two byte blasters and the system only sees one.   It also goes through the 'installing new hardware' procedure.   Seems to me that byte blaster all have the same USB serial number, so Windows can't work out which one is which.

[Altera_Forum]

A colleague of mine mentioned the same. 

 This means we can't control two systems using two identical Terasic blaster boxes. That will be the conclusion :-(

[Altera_Forum]

--- Quote Start ---  Seems to me that byte blaster all have the same USB serial number, so Windows can't work out which one is which.  --- Quote End ---  No,no.  Generally, USB devices don't need individual serial numbers to be distinguished by the Windows OS or the application software. They are also enumerated by connected interface and possibly involved hub ports. Of course, there's sometimes a problem in identifying the individual adapters, at worst case, USB-0 and USB-1 (as they are named by the Quartus JTAG driver stack) can change their places in some situation. But they are, at least in the Quartus tools, individually accesible. There may be a flaw with the NIOS II tools, as said, I don't know about.

[Altera_Forum]

Ok, so there should be a way to do this (or it could be an IDE bug?) 

Anyone out there has knowledge about this or could confirm that this is a bug?