Rant mode ON

I need to vent a little steam. So at risk of making myself look stupid (or more stupid) I will do it here.

I have been trying to get the Quartus 3.0 software and a license since last Thursday. I tried three times over the weekend to download it, but the slow modem link I have to use would not complete the entire transfer without a problem. I think I have that licked as my brother tells me he has downloaded it for me.

But I have been trying to get a license file that does not require an Ethernet interface and am getting nowhere. I have received several emails from Altera people who say that they support this and I need to contact my local FAE or the main office. I have tried to do both. All of the FAEs I know are either on vacation or in California at training. Calling both 800 numbers has gotten me nowhere since I reach people who are the "first line" and always have to refer it to someone else. I have left about half a dozen voice mails, sent easily a dozen emails, spoken with two types of support and still I have not heard back from anyone at Altera about this.

Right now I have been holding for about 15 minutes waiting for a third number to connect me with a person. I know that if I was this hard to get ahold of no one would *ever* buy any of my products!

Geeze .... I'm glad altera doesn't waste valuable time on your problem , they have real work to do. They have standardized on the ethernet interface, if you have a desktop spend $15 and buy one, if you have a laptop without one you may have to spend twice that on a USB version or something. You must have lots of time and little work.

"rickman" schrieb im Newsbeitrag news: snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com...

Get a download manager like Gozilla or something. The can resume a aboarded download.

-- Regards Falk

Why not take the ethernet card and attack the connector with wirecutters? You get a MAC address but the net don't work. :)

1. Especially if the problem at hand is that easy to solve, altera should help them out. If a company reacts like that to simple problems I would get suspicious what happens if something serious goes wrong. (BTW.: I had very similar problems with Xilinx in germany.)

1. I always thought that ethernet based protection is particulary useless as one can

- install the software inside a virtual machine with any virtual MAC address one likes

- write a dummy driver that tells the system that a deactivated NIC with the MAC address of choice is present in the system.

The only protection mechanism that is even more useless is volume-ID base protection.

Kolja Sulimma

At this point there is no reason. Altera has provided a license file keyed to the HDD SN. I was also told that this will be added to the web site in the near future just as they have for MaxPlusII.

Yes, I very much should use a program like that. In the past I have preferred not to add more and more utilities to do a job. Often it can cause problems which are hard to pinpoint. But I think this is one case where it is well worth the effort.

My concern is that once installed, I will have no way to control it if I don't want to use it for some files. I remember Netscape adding something like this (or I added some download, I can't remember which). There were times I did not want it to pop up and could not find a way to turn it off. It also showed ads while running.

Anyone know of a review of download utilities that would help me pick one?

but

transfer

he

aboarded

I've tried two or three and now use Download Accelerator Plus.

Leon

Thanks, I'll look at it.