Programming the FPGA

After assigning the pins and compiling, the last part before having your programm running on your board is the loading:

Be sure that you have specified the default value for unused pins before compiling and programming the design.

1. Click on the Programmer icon or on Tools->Programmer







2. Select Program/Configure in the check boxes list and verify that the filename is correct (it must be the name of your main entity with the .sof extension)
3. Check that your FPGA is correctly connected. If not, the tag No Hardware is printed near Harware setup. In this case, click on Hardware Setup and select the correct hardware.







4. Click on the Start button




Congratulations, your FPGA is running your program!

Issues

(Issues with JTAG server 32bit on Windows 7 64 bit)

If you encounter a problem wich causes JTAG server not to launch (Error: "Attempted to access JTAG server --internal error code 82 occurred"), implying that Quartus can't detect your device, here's the link to what will solve the problem: Altera Programmer

This is a standalone programmer with a correct version of the Altera JTAG service.

Links

If you want some advanced documentation check the following links:

http://www.altera.com/literature/hb/nios2/n2cpu_nii5v3_02.pdf - For more information on the JTAG UART communication and the like