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USB-Blaster conflict with beaglebone serial debug cable

Altera_Forum
Honored Contributor II
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Hi all 

 

We're bringing up a system with an Altera Cyclone 4 connected to a TI SoC. We want to capture events using SignalTap and use the Beaglebone serial cable to talk to the SoC. Problem is, the two adapters can't both be plugged into my Windows 7 system. I assume it has something to do with both cables running off of the same FTDI chip. 

 

Anybody know a trick I can use to let me plug both the USB-Blaster and the Beaglebone serial cable into the same PC? 

 

BTW, I don't ever see the USB-Blaster in Device Manager, even when it's working. Is that OK? 

 

Cheers! 

MADman
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Altera_Forum
Honored Contributor II
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A trick? Perhaps - in the same way that you can have multiple USB-Blasters plugged into one machine and use them "at the same time" (as well as having other FTDI based hardware connected). 

 

From the command prompt you can display the ID of all USB-Blaster cables with:jtagconfig -nYou can then use the "-c" switch to specify a specific cable name when using the programmer from the command line:quartus_pgm.exe -c "USB-Blaster " filename.cdfYou can do all this through the Quartus programmer GUI as well. 

 

Hopefully this can get the Quartus side of things up. I'd hope there is an equivalent way to specify the Beaglebone serial cable to the relevant software. 

 

 

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I don't ever see the USB-Blaster in Device Manager 

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I've never known this. But if it's working I'd expect it to respond to the jtagconfig command above - which I'd trust. 

 

Cheers, 

Alex
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Altera_Forum
Honored Contributor II
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I finally found the USB-Blaster in Device Manager, under USB Controllers. I was expecting it to be its own category. 

 

jtagconfig not recognized from command prompt default directory, so I need to find the path to it. Still working on it. 

 

MADman
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Altera_Forum
Honored Contributor II
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Aha! found it! And it finds the USB-Blaster regardless of whether the USB to serial cable is installed. 

 

A colleague found a thread with a hint at a solution: 

http://www.alteraforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=2015 (http://www.alteraforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=2015)
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Altera_Forum
Honored Contributor II
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'jtagconfig' is in you Quartus installation directory under .\quartus\bin64\jtagconfig.exe 

 

Cheers, 

Alex
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