Review on Enhanced Intel/Altera Cyclone IV FPGA Development Board - Discover the DueProLogic Advantage by Craig Sexton

The description of the board sounds great for training and projects. After much confusion and many tries I got this board working with the .sof and .pof output files. As another person wrote, Earth People Technology does not reply to emails but lists them for support. So I gave the DueProLogic 4 stars but should probably only get 3 as I spent a week getting it to the point where I could send both file types to it. I used Earth People Technology's JTAG Blaster hardware device to send .sof files. I use the built in USB drive for .pof files so they are saved to flash. The description sounds like installing the software is easy, but I didn't find it that way. This is a fair summary. Getting the JTAG Blaster driver to work was mostly luck as I had no idea what to do as it just didn't show up in the drop down list in Quartus Programmer Hardware! I had two COMMs showing up in the Windows 10 Device Manager when the board's built-in USB was connected to the computer as the instructions showed, and I placed the JTAG driver DLL where the instructions pointed to to copy them. I ended up using the Sentinel SENTINST.EXE that came with the Intel Quartus 20.1 download and at some point a popup appeared that saved the settings as far as I remember, but this popup didn't appear all the time(?) and until then Until it showed up, it seemed like restarting the computer lost something, since the blaster no longer showed up in Quartus Programmer's hardware drop-down list. After the settings were saved, the JTAG Blaster appeared in the Quartus Programmer/Hardware dialog and functioned by toggling the computer's power supply. . I thought the DVD might have been tested and wondered if downloading it was a good choice. With my slow download speed, Quartus took over an hour to complete. I downloaded the simulation and Cyclone IV support file. The Quartus installation takes care of the simulation file installation and support. I used the default folders and settings. I also downloaded Microsoft C# as described in the DueLogicPro guide. In the 80's I designed an ASIC on a Fairchild tube array using Daisy CAD. A completely different design experience compared to the current generation of FPGAs. So it took a lot of reading to barely understand the brands and features, let alone the software. For a hobby, I can't justify Intel's multi-thousand dollar FPGA development prices, so I'm grateful they have a free lite version. I don't know if other brands offer free versions. I've read that Xilinx has it, but it's not confirmed (yet), and Xilinx seems to have different software for different products. What is JTAG? Which mode is for what? When building a Quartus project, .sof files are generated as output and .pof files are intended to be saved to flash for readability at power-on, but you must convert .sof to .pof and select the correct flash device. From what I've read, .sof is for fast rotation; Writing to SRAM takes a second, while writing to Flash memory takes about 5 minutes. I didn't know any of that. I didn't know that JTAG mode is for .sof files and AS mode is for .pof files and built in USB is for AS mode and JTAG connector is for .sof files and Fastboot. At first I could write. pof files (after converting and figuring out which flash to select from the drop down list is EPSC4). This still worked regardless of correctness. The example used EPSC1 in print and the example worked but not when I selected that device. This is confusing now. At first I couldn't write .sof files. Now I can. What is different? I do not know. Today I plugged in the JTAG Blaster hardware from Earth People Technology and two devices appeared in the Quartus programmer's hardware dropdown list - EPT-JTAG-BLASTER (64) [MBUSB-0] and one with MBUSB-1. I used to only have one from the onboard USB blaster and the second one just came out today! -0 came and I used it. And the .sof files went on board! The other is probably for .pof and a built in USB path in AS mode. I also checked the integrity of the JTAG circuit with this blaster plugged into the JTAG connector and it worked - before I got the chain error. blasters Proposed Intel Blaster driver in Intel folder does not work - incompatibility issue. Someone mentioned terasIC's instructions for installing a driver - same as I did - but I downloaded their driver and it worked with this $7 device. I bought another FPGA board and it worked for sending .sof files in JTAG mode. This $7 blaster doesn't work with the DueProLogic board - at least not today. I compared the connector pinout and it is the same as the DueProLogic board. When trying to use the Intel Blaster driver, I tried disabling driver signing in Windows 10 Pro, but that didn't work either - got the same thing. Incompatibility message when trying to use Blaster driver in Intel Quartus folder. A way to disable the required signature with a keyboard, so I plugged in a USB keyboard and it didn't work. I tried the cmd line method in admin - it said it works, but maybe it doesn't need to be restarted as per the instructions I followed. It seems that installing drivers and software is the hardest part of it. I wrote two very simple test projects: 1) two buttons on the board light up with LEDs 2) a 32-bit counter increments at 100MHz, and bit 23 of the counter goes to VEL. With the second, the first went to flash memory. When the power is turned on, the second is restored. This shows the operation of flash memory and SRAM. I don't see a LED diagram with LED numbers (e.g. D32) so I can know which LED is working when assigning the FPGA pins. The documentation also doesn't list FPGA pins and LEDs - it shows something like <tbd>. So you have to look at the circuit and you still don't know which LED will light up in the 6x6 LED circuit! And in the schematic the LEDs don't seem to have consecutive names so I'm not sure if a few tests would work, but now that the .sof files are loaded I can quickly run 36 tests to figure out which LED which is (for future use). So incomplete documentation. Now I can continue my project.