I have a design with a JTAG chain consisting of APEXII, EPC16UC88, MERCURY, EPC16UC88.
I have built the design 3 previous times and been able to program my boards, no problems.
Now I have 3 boards, one works fine, one will not accept a .POF file into the second EPC16 part, and the third will not accept a .POF into either of the EPC16 parts.
What happens is Quartus starts erasing the part and after about 45 seconds kicks out with an error "Error Operation Failed"
I would think I have a bad part, but that would mean I have 3 bad parts out of six (and they are ball grids so not easy to swap out).
I think the JTAG chain is OK, I can do .SOF programs and everything works great.
Any ideas on what else to check or try, or could I have a batch of bad parts????
I have tried this under Quartus 2.8 and 3.0. I have also tried using a jam file under MaxPlus 10.2. I have tried it with different length cables from my parallel port, I have tried it with different Byte Blasters, and on different computers.
Thanks