Are there Quartus II Web Edition limitations?

I'm a complete beginner but I don't think that EPM7128AE is a configuration controller. Its a MAX7000A series PLD. The configuration controllers have numbers like EPCS64N. Your code needs to be loaded from somewhere else.

Peter

Thanks for the answer!

I already figured that out. It is just a custom programmed configuration controller for this dev kit. Now, I know how to programm the configuration for the FPGA into flash memory. It works through the web interface this dev kit provides. . . .

Still, I am interested in the question if there are any limitations in the Quartus II Web Edition software.

Maik

(It's easier to follow threads if you quote appropriately - if you want to use Google's broken Usenet interface, you have to learn the tricks.)

It's a while since I did any FPGA stuff, but as far as I know, the web edition fully supports the whole Max7000 series. The source code for the configuration controller in the EPM7128 is available along with the NIOS development kit (although it's easy enough to write your own). If you are thinking about making your own boards, the EPM7128 is a silly choice - it's expensive and limited, and completely unnecessary with more modern FPGAs.

Hello David!

Sorry for not quoting. I hope this times it works.

Now, I figured out that there is no appropriate configuration chip for the Stratix device on my board. But I also figured out, that the EPM7128, the FPGA and the Web Interface of the NIOS implementation on the FPGA together give me the opprtunity to use this board as FPGA dev Kit (I'm not interested in NIOS, yet). So I can load the VHDL configurations I made with Quartus II (.hexout file) into the configuration flash memory via the Web Interface that comes with the board. Now I understand, that I don't need any flash functionality of Quartus II, when I use this board.

You are right! In the case of an own board I would use the appropriate configuration chip for the chosen FPGA device. I think, the guys from Altera used the EPM7128 because they needed some custom functions for this dev board, and because this chip was state of the art at the time, they build it.

Slowly, I get an idea of using this board and Quartus II . . .

Greets Maik

Yes, that's working fine.

I believe you are correct here (when using the Nios board, I never actually downloaded into flash - I always had the jtag connection in).

The idea of using the EPM7128 along with a parallel flash is that the same flash device can be used for the FPGA image and the Nios program, it can be programmed under the control of the Nios, and it can store two images (a "working" image and a "safe" image). I don't have the details in my head, but I believe you can get the same sort of functionality with newer FPGAs using either the serial flash devices, or a parallel flash device. Even if you want to use an external CPLD to control booting (not a bad idea for flexibility), there are better (faster and cheaper) choices than the EPM7128 if you can choose freely.