User guide

September 2010 Altera Corporation Cyclone III FPGA Development Kit User Guide
A. Programming the Flash Device
Overview
There is a Common Flash Interface (CFI) type flash memory device on the Cyclone III
development board. When you first receive the kit, this CFI flash device arrives
programmed with a default factory configuration that was loaded from a
Programmer Object File (.pof).
When you power up the board, the CFI flash device configures the FPGA with the
default factory configuration using Passive Serial (PS) programming. If the
configuration loads correctly, the user LEDs on the board flash sequentially from side
to side.
As you develop your own project using the Altera tools, you may wish to program the
flash device so that, upon power up, it loads the FPGA with your own design. Or you
may wish to restore the default factory configuration to your board.
This appendix describes how to program the flash device. You can load an existing
design from a .pof, but if your design exists only as an SRAM Object File (.sof), then
first you must convert the .sof to a .pof. Programming the flash device also requires
the use of the Altera parallel flash loader (PFL). Using this appendix, you can do the
following:
■ Create a flash file by converting a .sof to .pof
■ Install the PFL
■ Use the Quartus II Programmer to write a .pof to the flash device
■ Restore the default factory configuration
Creating a Flash File
To create a flash-programmable configuration .pof, perform the following steps:
1. On the File menu in the Quartus II software, click Convert Programming Files.
2. In the Convert Programming Files dialog box, select the parameter values as
shown in the following table:
Table A–1.
Parameter Value
Programming file type Programmer Object File (.pof)
Configuration device CFI_512MB
Mode 1-bit Passive Serial
File name
<output_file.pof>
This is the default file name. Change this to the file name you wish to use
for your application. Save the file in
< path>\...\examples\cycloneIII_3c120_dev_pfl.
Memory Map File selected (default)