FPGA Central

I posted a service request with Altera on this, but I thought I would
see if anyone else has seen this problem.

I have written a small 8-bit microcomputer system for my Altera DE2
board. The system has 16kB ROM that I preinitialize with an intel .hex
format file.

The design takes quite a while to fit because I want to operate it at a
relatively high clock rate (100MHz), so I turned on smart-compile. Now
that the basic hardware is functioning, and I am only changing the ROM
image, I would expect to simply recompile and let Quartus read in the
new .hex file.

However, when I try to recompile, I get an error:
Internal Error: Sub-system: QATM, File: qatm_mif_update.cpp, Line: 554
RAM/CAM MIF reconfig failed
Quartus II Version 5.1 Build 216 03/06/2006 SJ Web Edition
Service Pack Installed: 2

Note, the fitter doesn't (seem) to have a problem reading the .hex
file. I can manually rerun the fitter, and it appears to work just
fine. I believe the fitter is working properly because the address
patterns seems consistent with a hang - not an uninitialized memory.

This is on a Windows XP workstation. The project files are mounted from
a file server on drive Y:.

Thanks!

Hi Radarman,

This is probably a bug in Quartus II 5.1 SP1. If you have an support
incident opened email me the number so that we can verify it with the
design, or zip the project archive and emailit to me separately. We can ley
you know if this has been fixed in 6.0 or if it is still a problem fix it
for 6.1.

Thanks,
Subroto Datta
Altera Corp.

"radarman" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected] ups.com...
>I posted a service request with Altera on this, but I thought I would
> see if anyone else has seen this problem.
>
> I have written a small 8-bit microcomputer system for my Altera DE2
> board. The system has 16kB ROM that I preinitialize with an intel .hex
> format file.
>
> The design takes quite a while to fit because I want to operate it at a
> relatively high clock rate (100MHz), so I turned on smart-compile. Now
> that the basic hardware is functioning, and I am only changing the ROM
> image, I would expect to simply recompile and let Quartus read in the
> new .hex file.
>
> However, when I try to recompile, I get an error:
> Internal Error: Sub-system: QATM, File: qatm_mif_update.cpp, Line: 554
> RAM/CAM MIF reconfig failed
> Quartus II Version 5.1 Build 216 03/06/2006 SJ Web Edition
> Service Pack Installed: 2
>
> Note, the fitter doesn't (seem) to have a problem reading the .hex
> file. I can manually rerun the fitter, and it appears to work just
> fine. I believe the fitter is working properly because the address
> patterns seems consistent with a hang - not an uninitialized memory.
>
> This is on a Windows XP workstation. The project files are mounted from
> a file server on drive Y:.
>
> Thanks!
>

Subroto Datta wrote:
> Hi Radarman,
>
> This is probably a bug in Quartus II 5.1 SP1. If you have an support
> incident opened email me the number so that we can verify it with the
> design, or zip the project archive and emailit to me separately. We can ley
> you know if this has been fixed in 6.0 or if it is still a problem fix it
> for 6.1.
>
> Thanks,
> Subroto Datta
> Altera Corp.
>
> "radarman" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:[email protected] ups.com...
> >I posted a service request with Altera on this, but I thought I would
> > see if anyone else has seen this problem.
> >
> > I have written a small 8-bit microcomputer system for my Altera DE2
> > board. The system has 16kB ROM that I preinitialize with an intel .hex
> > format file.
> >
> > The design takes quite a while to fit because I want to operate it at a
> > relatively high clock rate (100MHz), so I turned on smart-compile. Now
> > that the basic hardware is functioning, and I am only changing the ROM
> > image, I would expect to simply recompile and let Quartus read in the
> > new .hex file.
> >
> > However, when I try to recompile, I get an error:
> > Internal Error: Sub-system: QATM, File: qatm_mif_update.cpp, Line: 554
> > RAM/CAM MIF reconfig failed
> > Quartus II Version 5.1 Build 216 03/06/2006 SJ Web Edition
> > Service Pack Installed: 2
> >
> > Note, the fitter doesn't (seem) to have a problem reading the .hex
> > file. I can manually rerun the fitter, and it appears to work just
> > fine. I believe the fitter is working properly because the address
> > patterns seems consistent with a hang - not an uninitialized memory.
> >
> > This is on a Windows XP workstation. The project files are mounted from
> > a file server on drive Y:.
> >
> > Thanks!
> >

The same problem occurs in 6.0, but I discovered that it works if I
convert my .hex file to .mif. For some reason, it doesn't like my .hex
initialization files.

Just out of curiosity, is there a command line utility that will
convert from .hex to .mif? I could add it to my build scripts.

Thanks!

Google hex2mif. I cannot personally vouch for the correctness of these
hex2mif converters but you can try. Anyway thanks for the lead and I
will follow up on it.

- Subroto Datta
Altera Corp.

On Oct 12, 8:34 am, "radarman" <jsham...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Subroto Datta wrote:
> > Hi Radarman,
>
> > This is probably a bug in Quartus II 5.1 SP1. If you have an support
> > incident opened email me the number so that we can verify it with the
> > design, or zip the project archive and emailit to me separately. We can ley
> > you know if this has been fixed in 6.0 or if it is still a problem fix it
> > for 6.1.
>
> > Thanks,
> > Subroto Datta
> > Altera Corp.
>
> > "radarman" <jsham...@gmail.com> wrote in message
> >news:[email protected] oups.com...
> > >I posted a service request with Altera on this, but I thought I would
> > > see if anyone else has seen this problem.
>
> > > I have written a small 8-bit microcomputer system for my Altera DE2
> > > board. The system has 16kB ROM that I preinitialize with an intel .hex
> > > format file.
>
> > > The design takes quite a while to fit because I want to operate it at a
> > > relatively high clock rate (100MHz), so I turned on smart-compile. Now
> > > that the basic hardware is functioning, and I am only changing the ROM
> > > image, I would expect to simply recompile and let Quartus read in the
> > > new .hex file.
>
> > > However, when I try to recompile, I get an error:
> > > Internal Error: Sub-system: QATM, File: qatm_mif_update.cpp, Line: 554
> > > RAM/CAM MIF reconfig failed
> > > Quartus II Version 5.1 Build 216 03/06/2006 SJ Web Edition
> > > Service Pack Installed: 2
>
> > > Note, the fitter doesn't (seem) to have a problem reading the .hex
> > > file. I can manually rerun the fitter, and it appears to work just
> > > fine. I believe the fitter is working properly because the address
> > > patterns seems consistent with a hang - not an uninitialized memory.
>
> > > This is on a Windows XP workstation. The project files are mounted from
> > > a file server on drive Y:.
>
> > > Thanks!The same problem occurs in 6.0, but I discovered that it works if I
> convert my .hex file to .mif. For some reason, it doesn't like my .hex
> initialization files.
>
> Just out of curiosity, is there a command line utility that will
> convert from .hex to .mif? I could add it to my build scripts.
>
> Thanks!- Hide quoted text -- Show quoted text -