So while I’m experimenting with FPGA boards I generally upload a design into them at runtime via a USB-Blaster JTAG cable, and only rarely do I store a design permanently in a board’s configuration device.<\/p>\n
Some of the boards I use have two separate connectors for the USB Blaster – one for direct programming of the FPGA and the other for Active Serial programming of an EPCS series flash device.\u00a0 Others have an onboard microcontroller which handle configuration – and then there’s the Vampire 500 board.\u00a0 This has a single JTAG connector and an EPCS4 configuration device, but no immediately obvious means of programming the EPCS4.<\/p>\n
With no direct access to the configuration device, programming has to be done from within the FPGA itself.\u00a0 It’s easy to find examples or descriptions of programming an EPCS with a NIOS II SoPC component, but as I discovered a short while ago,\u00a0there are simpler methods<\/a>:<\/p>\n (Copied-and-pasted here for convenience, and instructions changed to suit the Vampire board…)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" So while I’m experimenting with FPGA boards I generally upload a design into them at runtime via a USB-Blaster JTAG cable, and only rarely do I store a design permanently in a board’s configuration device. Some of the boards I … Continue reading \n
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