Is $50 Terasic Blaster a correct product for Altera MAX7000A ? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: unitedatoms
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 15, 2019, 01:03:30 am
content: I am choosing the programmer cable for Quartus II Lite software to program the MAX 7000A chips. I don't have experience with CPLD, only starting.I see a lot of bad revews about cloned $3 eBay Blaster programmers. However the genuine Intel device costs $225.On Intel forums someone confirms that Terasic is an Altera partner.https://forums.intel.com/s/question/0D50P00003yyPRMSA2/what-is-altera-postion-about-usb-blaster-clones?language=en_USSo I found their Blaster on Digi-Key.https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/terasic-inc/P0302/P0302-ND/2003484Does anyone know if this Terasic device works well and does not involve unsigned Windows drivers, hacks and blue screens of death ?

author: fourtytwo42
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 15, 2019, 06:43:01 pm
content: In my recent experience with Altera FPGA's it is VERY platform dependent!I actually have a cheepy Ebay USB-blaster working but I had to revert to winXP on a 32bit machine and use Quartus/standalone programmer version 12.0 to do it!!I could not get anything working on 64 bit Linux at all (with any version of Quartus).IMOP expensive programming hardware is a waste of money as I reckon it will suffer the same platform problems as the cheap ones.

author: george.b
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 15, 2019, 07:26:43 pm
content: Quote from: fourtytwo42 on December 15, 2019, 06:43:01 pmMy cheap USB Blaster clone from ebay works fine on Windows 7 64-bit. I have used it with MAX 7000S devices before. Dunno about Linux.

author: ebclr
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 15, 2019, 10:13:24 pm
content: I have the original one and the cheap clones, The clones works nears the same as the original one, does not waste your money and go to a good clone

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 16, 2019, 01:24:47 am
content: I've been using one of the $5 USB Blaster clones for years, it works perfectly fine on Win7 x64, a bunch of guys I know use them and nobody ever mentioned any issues.

author: Daixiwen
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 16, 2019, 08:19:07 am
content: I've had some issues with clones under Linux, but no problem with Windows

author: bingo600
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 18, 2019, 05:21:06 pm
content: I'm using a $3 clone w. Quartus 13.0 (SP1) under linux (Mint 17.3)Works excellent , but ISTR you have to enable libusb support by setting an env variable/Bingo

author: blacksheeplogic
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 19, 2019, 03:47:30 am
content: I mentioned in another thread that I had problems with USB Blaster on Quartus 18 on Linux Ubuntu 64, but after update 18.1.0.625 the Linux Ubuntu 64 problem was resolved (dependency on SDK removed). I have not tried Quartus 19 as I would need to move the card and also install Ubuntu (all my other systems are Debian) to see if it works. I'm reluctant to upgrade my 18.1 install simply because it works and 18.1 is what I use.

author: Daixiwen
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 21, 2019, 08:06:43 pm
content: The main rule with Quartus (as with any complicated and unstable tool) is upgrade only if you absolutely need it.If it ain't broken, don't fix it. Because you'll brake it, and still can't fix it