PCI S1300 FPGA development board - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: KaliceFr
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: July 05, 2023, 11:21:47 am
content: Hello,I bought a PCI S1300 FPGA development board from aliexpressLink:https://fr.aliexpress.com/item/32845001106.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.main.21.57e33b66j5vcwj&algo_pvid=a8f1c514-a4de-4f8f-bceb-fd90145d2896&algo_exp_id=a8f1c514-a4de-4f8f-bceb-fd90145d2896-10&pdp_npi=3%40dis%21EUR%21151.12%21139.03%21%21%21160.56%21%21%40211bf49716885559953326874d07dc%2165128351802%21sea%21FR%212067787816&curPageLogUid=lif1VfJO6g3P.However, I received only the board, no software included.According to the description, it is "compatible with iridium element company's fire dragon knife series FPGA development board".Can anyone help me to find software to use it ?Thank you !

author: betocool
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: July 05, 2023, 01:57:09 pm
content: It's a Cyclone II FPGA from Intel, formerly Altera.I may be wrong, I believe the current Quartus software does not support it. however, I imagine that Quartus II v13 or so will work. There's tons of documentation (hard to find) here:https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/programmable/support-resources/devices/cyclone-ii-support.htmlhttps://community.intel.com/t5/Programmable-Devices/Cyclone-II-Quartus-Legacy-Support/m-p/1343290Do you have a programming cable? I've no idea how you'll go about loading a program.Cyclone Ii FPGAs may be obsolete? I could be wrong, haven't seen them in yonks!Cheers,Alberto

author: dferyance
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: July 05, 2023, 03:02:49 pm
content: I expect you are going to have some trouble. It has a JTAG header so you will need a JTAG programmer. I don't see configuration memory on the board. It might be there and I am missing it, but it isn't clear to me. Usually development boards have a switch to select programming the config memory or the FPGA directly. I don't see that either. So you may be programming the FPGA directly every time it powers up.You'll need some kind of pin mapping or schematic. Usually FPGA boards come with some samples that already have the pin map setup based on the board. So you may have to visibly map the traces.The url on the board ofhttp://www.edacd.cndoesn't appear to be available (at least for me). But the internet archive does have the site archived. Looks like around 2010 there is some info on the board but I didn't see any downloads or schematics.

author: mon2
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 05, 2023, 03:09:59 pm
content: Ditto the comments made above. The URL on the PCB does not work here either in Canada. Likely the company is no longer that built this board.Request from the vendor to share the board schematics and code examples. If they sell it, they should have better history of this product than you will. We recently purchased a FPGA (Cyclone based) + WCH PCIe bridge for R&D efforts. After a number of hoops, the vendor finally shared the details but took many emails for the 'support'.We can post them here if there is an interest but in the end, you need schematics to make full use of your board.Yes, you will have to use the older WEB (free) editions of the Quartus tools to support the older EOL Altera devices. Also suggest to review Jean's amazing fpga4fun website for other tutorials.

author: KaliceFr
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: July 06, 2023, 04:24:49 am
content: First of all, thank you very much for your replies. As a background, I have some (limited) knowledge in fpga programming sinceI worked on it as a hobby on spartan X3C1000 dev board a few years ago.I have an usb blaster which works well (I installed tools on a VM to program an EPM240 CPLD, and all good).I looked after a PCI (not PCIE) board to try to make some acceleration on an old BeBox computer which is only PCI and ISA,so this is why I bought it.The seller has sent me the board without the software, and as far, has not responded to my requests, soI asked for a refund...According to the description, it is able to be programmed directly through the PCI.I connected it to my Windows computer which recognizes a device like a "Multimedia Video Controller".Of course, no driver for it can be found.Here is the full english description from aliexpress:Quote

author: KaliceFr
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: July 06, 2023, 04:26:11 am
content: I forgot, I used wayback machine to access the site. Looks like there is a RAR archivefor the S1300 PCI, but it has not been archived...

author: KaliceFr
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: July 06, 2023, 07:17:46 am
content: Made some pictures of the board:

author: KaliceFr
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: July 06, 2023, 10:49:49 am
content: Parts:- ADM202E- HYSCS03091-1- EP2C5Q208C8N- AM29LV800B- EPCS1- AMS1117-S- COM connector- JTAG connector (probably connected to EPCS1)

author: DiTBho
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 07, 2023, 08:46:29 am
content: Quote from: KaliceFr on July 06, 2023, 04:24:49 amThere are two methods:the FPGA directly interfaces the PCI, the FPGA needs to directly manage PCI bus timing and cyclesthe FPGA talks to a PCI-to-ISA bridge chip, which exposes the PCI to the FPGA in a simpler wayyour board is of the first kind. On one hand, this solution is more flexible than chips that handle the PCI stuff and expose it as an "ISA" bus to the FPGA but, on the other hand, it requires advanced knowledge of both the internal PCI stuff and FPGA code design.That's why you pay 300 USD for a development kit: the HDL side is ***very*** tricky, so it's a valued commercial component.Quote from: KaliceFr on July 06, 2023, 04:24:49 amto acceleratewhat?I own two BeBox dual PPC604 computers and I have a dev kit, both C and C++, which I use to design/port GNU userspace applications, but don't have any kernel source, so I cannot design anything to accelerate the kernel stuff.Quote from: KaliceFr on July 06, 2023, 04:24:49 amFrom my experience, the jtag on the PCI is not always implemented/supported in hardware on the Computer side. None of my non-x86 computers have it.The PCI stuff is detected and recognized by Vendor ID and Product ID, I'm guessing your card has something randomly programmed into it.Anyway, it's irrelevant, if you can expose the jtag pins on the FPGA, you can bypass whatever the PCI is supposed to provide bitstream uploading (you can cut wires to be sure they wouldn't add noise), and add a USB-Jtag programmer to program the FPGA.This way, it would be directly supported by the same software and tools you use to synthetize and upload the bitstream.

author: DiTBho
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 07, 2023, 08:55:44 am
content: Quote from: DiTBho on July 07, 2023, 08:46:29 amI am specifically working with this approach as the other approach is too complex and consumes too much money and time.The simplest solution on the market comes from a Chinese PCI-to-ISA bridge which is fine, cheap, and very easy to use, with the cost of a limited 5 Mbyte/sec bandwidth, no-burst cycles, no PCI-bus-mastering, and a linear mapping space of only 64Kbyte.It's enough for my purpose.

author: KaliceFr
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: July 07, 2023, 11:28:45 am
content: Thank you very much !

author: DiTBho
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 08, 2023, 10:46:52 am
content: so, what do you want to accelerate?

author: mon2
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 08, 2023, 11:00:04 am
content: If not known already, WCH offers a PCIe to parallel bridge as well as PCI to parallel bridge. On AliExpress you can purchase host adapters with these devices and a FPGA onboard for development. We recently brought one in last week based on a Cyclone IV + byte blaster JTAG tool clone.

author: c64
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 13, 2023, 11:10:26 pm
content: I have no experience with PCI, but my understanding is:- cyclone 2 only supports 3.3v PCI- 3.3v PCI is very rare and mostly used in servers.I've never seen motherboard with 3.3v PCI

author: EEexpert
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: July 14, 2023, 02:06:11 pm
content: Quote from: c64 on July 13, 2023, 11:10:26 pmWith PCI 2.3 it's not so easy. PCI slots often are with 5v keying, but actually don't even support 5v cards, only 3.3v ones with universal keying.And many more or less recent desktop motherboards are PCI 2.3 compliant.

author: DiTBho
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 14, 2023, 03:01:36 pm
content: Moral of the story it's garbage.Don't buy random things on Aliexpress!