FPGA Central

Hello:

I have seen a couple of Altera development kits that allow you to
program the FPGA using a USB port (instead of JTAG). This is
accomplished using a usb interface chip such as one from ftdi chip and
a cpld from altera (such as max 7000, part# EPM7064).

Can anyone tell me where I can obtain the programming files to program
the max 7000?


Thanks in advance/

JS

Hi Jeffrey,

I was asked the same question not long ago because, with our Tornado board
(http://www.alse-fr.com/tornado/torn_educ_us.pdf)
we do USB programming with the ftdi chip :-)

AFAIK, Altera would not be willing to give away the USB Blaster technology, but
indeed you should ask them with your own arguments and see their answer.

Designing the CPLD to just send an RBF bitstream at a given bitrate is very simple,
provided you accept to write your own programmer utility (very simple too in this
limited case).
But it couldn't be transparently compatible with Altera's programmer SW and all its
functions without deeply reverse-engineering all their USB blaster technology (bit
arrangement, commands protocols, reporting, JTag control, etc...) and this is
certainly not legal.

The easy way to get USB speed and retain software copatibility with Altera tools is
purchasing the Altera USB blaster.

Bert Cuzeau


Jeffrey Smith wrote:

> Hello:
>
> I have seen a couple of Altera development kits that allow you to
> program the FPGA using a USB port (instead of JTAG). This is
> accomplished using a usb interface chip such as one from ftdi chip and
> a cpld from altera (such as max 7000, part# EPM7064).
>
> Can anyone tell me where I can obtain the programming files to program
> the max 7000?
>
>
> Thanks in advance/
>
> JS
>