2.5. Installing the USB-Blaster Driver
The development board includes integrated USB-Blaster circuitry for FPGA programming. However, for the host computer and board to communicate, you must install the on-board USB-Blaster II driver on the host computer.
Installation instructions for the on-board USB-Blaster II driver for your operating system are available on the Altera website. On the Altera Programming Cable Driver Information page of the Altera website, locate the table entry for your configuration and click the link to access the instructions.
The on-board USB Blaster II circuit defaults to 24M and can be unstable depending on the bus loading or HSMC cards installed. It is recommended to change the speed down to 16M for better stability.
From a Nios® II Command Shell, type the following
jtagconfig
Note: returns the device lists of all the USB cables
jtagconfig --getparam <cable> Jtagclock
Note: returns current setting
jtagconfig --setparam <cable> JtagClock 16M
Note: sets to 16M (recommended)
Attention: <cable> is the index of the USB cables and it starts with 1.
Attention: This setting is non-volatile and may need to be done if you power down and unplug your board and then power it back up and plug it in again.
USB-Blaster II Supported Rates:
- 24 MHz
- 16 MHz
- 6 MHz
- 24/n MHz (between 10 KHz and 6 MHz, where n represents an integer value.)
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