Programming the v1495
Generic Info
By the above method we write the firmware on the EEPROM (Electrically Erasable Permanent Read Only Memory) of the FPGA chip. This takes about 5-10 minutes. This firmware is loaded 'permanently'. A faster way to programme is to load the firmware into the Flash Memory using a USB blaster. This happens within 2 seconds. For programming the User (Bridge) FPGA, the USB blaster needs to be connected to the lower (upper) 6 pin male connector on the v1495, the other end of the Blaster connected to the computer through which using a software called Quartus, the *.sof file can be loaded on the flash memory.
A firmware put to the flash memory takes precedence and gets loaded on the User FPGA rather than the one stored in the permanent memory. After burning a code to the flash memory, if the crate is rebooted, the firmware loaded in the permanent memory gets loaded again.
Possible Errors
- if after running the v1495firmware function while burning the firmware into EEPROM, if
- the memory address to which you are loading this firmware does not have a v1495 or
- the hardware address of the v1495 for which the VME bus address was obtained is not in the same crate/CPU, as the one from which it is trying to be programmed.
Then the following message is received back on the terminal.
Updating firmware of the FPGA USER with the file v1495cp_16bit_r2006.rbf [ 16] written 0x56, read back 0xff -> Flash writing failure (byte 16 of page 48) ! Firmware not loaded ! Task not found
