ByteBlaster with USB<->PP adapter?

Sep 30, 2003 3 Replies
H

Hi all,



Does anyone know if Altera Quartus II (3.0+) will let me use a parallel port to USB adapter? I just got a new machine, in part so I could upgrade to 3.0 from 2.2 (and in part so everything would go faster), but it doesn't have a parallel port! I basically have three options: waste the only PCI slot in the machine for a parallel port card, use a USB adapter, or special-order a manufacturer-special parallel port interface for the machine with unknown lead time.



The question is basically: does Quartus II rely on it being a serial port interface with the traditional I/O ports, or does it handle anything that can drive a printer?



Shelling out $300 for the yet-not-in-existence USB-Blaster cable is not realistic, nor is $500 for MasterBlaster which doesn't even handle the active serial configuration devices.



-hpa


at work, in private! If you send me mail in HTML format I will assume it's spam. "Unix gives you enough rope to shoot yourself in the foot." Architectures needed: ia64 m68k mips64 ppc ppc64 s390 s390x sh v850 x86-64
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S

I believe that it treats the port as a bit bashed parallel port and as such requires it to look exactly like a parallel port. so unless the USB parallel port has the same registers, it won't work. But this is just a belief.

I would suggest you waste a PCI port.. but make sure that the parallel port card you buy can be returned if it doesn't work. Not all parallel ports are created equal.

Simon

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S

Peter,

I asked the experts at Altera, and they verified that using a parallel port to USB adapter will not work.

- Subroto Datta Altera Corp.

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H

Followup to: By author: "Subroto Datta" In newsgroup: comp.arch.fpga

Thanks. I ended up finding a vendor which carried the proprietary parallel port interface (really just a special cable plugging into a nonstandard header on the motherboard -- had they used a standard header the problem would have been solved long ago) for this machine and could deliver it with a reasonable lead time; FedEx is supposed to deliver it today.

A USB solution would have been nicer because of portability, of course.

-hpa

at work, in private! If you send me mail in HTML format I will assume it's spam. "Unix gives you enough rope to shoot yourself in the foot." Architectures needed: ia64 m68k mips64 ppc ppc64 s390 s390x sh v850 x86-64
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