SoC u-boot stuck in loop trying to load bad FPGA soc

[PeteHarbour]

Hi,

I have an Arria-10 SoC design with eMMC, running u-boot / Linux.  I have an incorrect FPGA soc (clear-mode) saved in flash.  u-boot is stuck in a loop attempting to load the FPGA image into fabric, unsuccessfully.  u-boot never reaches a text prompt where I can interrupt to issue command to erase flash so I can re-load soc with a working image.  How can I get past this?
I appear to only have a session with u-boot on serial port.  Cannot telnet in while u-boot is stuck in FPGA image loader loop.

[PeteHarbour]

I have verified board is good by loading good FPGA soc with Quartus programmer successfully.  But, I cannot save this soc into specific eMMC sectors via Quartus.  u-boot and Linux images are good on flash, only FPGA soc is bad image.  What tools can help me edit eMMC image without u-boot command interface?

[PeteHarbour · Accepted solution]

When booting SoC platform from eMMC flash device (boot-ROM --> u-boot --> linux) and incorrect FPGA image mistakenly written to eMMC the only repair option appears to be a complete flash image (sdimage) re-write.  For eMMC flash device the only supported option is to change HW boot-select (BSEL) pins to cause boot-ROM to ignore flash 2nd-stage boot loader (u-boot).  Then one can use Intel flash_programmer Python-script to re-write original sdimage to eMMC flash as a recovery option.
Short answer: don't mistakenly write wrong FPGA image onto MMC flash of Soc platform or you're *DEADBEEF*

[JingyangTeh_Altera]

Hi

You could try the python script (make_sdimage_p3.py) in the how-to below:

https://www.rocketboards.org/foswiki/Documentation/BuildingBootloaderCycloneVAndArria10#Arria_10_SoC_45_Boot_from_SD_Card

Use the command below to get the script:

wget https://releases.rocketboards.org/2021.04/gsrd/tools/make_sdimage_p3.py

You would create the folder in which you would like to be placed in the sd card. The folder will be the different partition in the sd card.

Regards

Jingyang, Teh

[JingyangTeh_Altera]

Hi

I’m glad that your question has been addressed, I now transition this thread to community support. If you have a new question, Please login to ‘https://supporttickets.intel.com/s/?language=en_US’, view details of the desire request, and post a feed/response within the next 15 days to allow me to continue to support you. After 15 days, this thread will be transitioned to community support. The community users will be able to help you on your follow-up questions.

Regards

Jingyang, Teh