[hpsdr] Penny FPGA Load

[Joe Martin K5SO]

Hi Gordon,

Sorry to hear that you're still having trouble with your Penny FPGA  
load.  For what it's worth, I have had some interesting times using  
the HPSDR programmer here to load my FPGAs too.  In fact, I have to  
use two different versions of HPSDR Programmer depending upon whether  
I am loading Metis or Mercury/Penny.

As it happens on my particular computer system, for Metis I must use  
v1.4 of the HPSDR Programmer whereas for Mercury or Penny I must use  
v1.0 of the HPSDR Programmer.  HPSDR Programmer v1.4 does not find the  
Merc/Penny on "Interrogate" and HPSDR Programmer v1.0 does not detect  
any Metis board present.  This particular situation isn't true for  
anyone else that I know of, however.

Also, I have had on occasion had an apparently successful loading of  
the FPGA in Mercury or Penny using the HPSDR Programmer but, as in  
your case, when powering it up afterward the Penny (or Mercury) fails  
to come up.  To recover from this I simply re-did the FPGA loading  
procedure using HPSDR Programmer (v1.0 in my case for Penny/Mercury)  
and everything works okay the second time even through re-powering of  
the Penny/Mercury after the FPGA loading was completed.

Of course, make sure that you have no other boards on the Atlas bus  
except your Penny and Metis boards and that Penny is closest to the  
power plug and has the "Last JTAG" jumper installed on it and that J1  
on Metis is in place during the FPGA load and removed when testing  
Penny (as I believe you did).

So,

1)  if you haven't tried simply re-doing the FPGA load from scratch  
you might try that.

As an alternative method, do you have a Byte Blaster cable to enable  
you to load the FPGA using the Quartus II Programmer?

As a note, John Melton has kindly offered to help me figure out what  
is happening with the HPSDR Programmer on my particular system but,  
although I have downloaded the WireShark program, I haven't taken the  
time to learn how to use it to get him the necessary diagnostic  
feedback info yet.  Truthfully, it hasn't been a high priority here  
since I do have a scheme to use the two versions to get what I need  
done, hihi.

Maybe others on the reflector have better suggestions for you, Gordon.

73,  Joe K5SO



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