MAX10 10M08 intermittently failing to program with Quartus

[sy_idaho]

I have a MAX 10 eval board, OPN#: EK-10M08E144.

I have a project I have compiled using Quartus Prime Lite 20.1.0 Build 711 06/05/2020 SJ Lite Edition. I have made a dual boot image for it but disabled the watchdog and encryption when the sof was converted to pof. 

I have tried using a EthernetBlasterII as well as a USB Blaster II to flash the device. I can get it to flash a small percentage of the times I attempt to flash it. I have also tried this on another equivalent part number eval board with the same issue. It appears that pressing and releasing the reset momentary button has some small positive effect on the likelyhood of flashing but the last several times I have flashed it, the flash procedure has failed on verification and I believe the image in the FPGA is not quite right as it blatantly does not match simulation.

I also have the same problem with a lesser degree of severity on my end product which uses a similar MAX 10 device, the 10M08SAM153I7G. This problem seems to never happen with the first flash out of the box but happens on all subsequent flashes of the device. I have tried running the JTAG test but it seems to pass (If I am holding reset).

Interestingly, it seems like the laptop running Quartus _may_ have something to do with it as I have found a laptop that appears to be able to program and never see any of the problems.  Has anyone run into this?  Is there a solution?

[NurAiman_M_Intel]

Hi,

Thank you for contacting Intel community.

Per my understanding based on your statement below:

"Interestingly, it seems like the laptop running Quartus _may_ have something to do with it as I have found a laptop that appears to be able to program and never see any of the problems"

You have tried to program the board using other laptop and it works, hence it might be due to previous laptop problem that not supported the Quartus. Please used the good laptop to run the board.

Regards,

Aiman

[sy_idaho]

Out of 10 different computers Quartus works on one of them correctly?  If that is really true, it seems like you would want to fix it?  Does it work on your computer?  Get an eval board and try it.  I just made a fresh project from scratch in Quartus Lite that is a 31 bit counter with the top bits hooked to the LEDs.  It builds but it won't program.  So I tried your solution of just trying another computer.  That one won't even connect to the programmer.  Are you sure you don't have anything you can do to help?

It will program the sof file but only with reset held which appears to effectively invalidate loading the sof file.

I suspect it has something to do with generating the pof file or possibly loading it.  If you could walk through an example like the one I suggested and take some screen shots of generating the pof file, maybe that would give me enough to debug it.

[NurAiman_M_Intel]

Hi,

Apologize for the misunderstanding on my previous response as I did not know that you have tested on few other computer and not successful.

I found a similar issue that has been addressed previously, please take a look and let me know your feedback.

https://community.intel.com/t5/Intel-Quartus-Prime-Software/MAX10-pof-programming-fail/td-p/243893

Regards,

Aiman

[sy_idaho]

Aiman:

That sounds very similar to the problem I am experiencing except I match best with what the last poster described and that post was never resolved.  This is an FPGA that I have flashed multiple times with a sof and also with a pof but the programming success is very infrequent.  It seems like a Quartus driver bug or something but could possibly have something to do with the board or IC I suppose though that seems like it should be unlikely since this is the eval board.  I experience the problem using example code so I think I have ruled out the design itself being flashed leaving only the options, way it is executed in Quartus, or Quartus itself.

[NurAiman_M_Intel]

Hi,

-Does it show any error message? Please provide the screenshot.

-Can you try to change the TCK frequency to 6MHz and see if it works?

-It also can be caused by USB Blaster, can you try it with the other USB blaster?

Regards,

Aiman

[NurAiman_M_Intel]

We do not receive any response from you to the previous replyr that I have provided. This thread will be transitioned to community support. If you have a new question, feel free to open a new thread to get the support from Intel experts. Otherwise, the community users will continue to help you on this thread. Thank you.