[hpsdr] Terasic USB Byte Blaster Buddies

[Graham / KE9H]

All:

There are a number of you on this list, myself included, that
have purchased a Terasic USB Blaster as a way to change the
code on the HPSDR cards, as an alternative to the much higher
priced Altera USB Byte Blaster.

I have been unable to update the PROM on my
Mercury card with my new Terasic USB-Blaster.

Bill T. reported that he could program his Mercury PROM.

So, I just spent the morning up at Bill's house trying to debug
what was happening.

It turns out that both my and his Terasic Byte Blaster will
program the PROM on an Alpha-2 (prototype) version of Mercury. 
Neither will program the PROM on a production Mercury.

An Altera Byte Blaster will program the PROM on both versions
of Mercury.

The is not supposed to be a difference between the programmers,
and there is not supposed to be a difference on the PROM
programming port on Mercury.  But "no difference" is apparently
a relative term.

Scotty has agreed to dig into this issue.  We will let you know
what the conclusion might be.

Those of you who have not yet purchased a Byte Blaster should
not be concerned.  There is an alternate method coming soon,
where Ozy is downloaded with Byte Blaster code, and then can
program the PROMs or FPGAs on the HPSDR cards via the
Atlas bus JTAG link.  This method is in Alpha test at this time,
and is working.

--- Graham / KE9H

==


 1230576958.0