Altera Nios II - Manual (Page 13)

Chapter 2: Using the Flash Programmer GUI 2–5
Starting the Flash Programmer GUI
© March 2014 Altera Corporation Nios II Flash Programmer User Guide
1 Altera recommends that your FPGA target design include a System ID component,
and that you enable both system ID and system timestamp checking.
By default, both system ID and system timestamp checking are enabled. To disable
checking for system ID or system timestamp, perform the following steps:
1. Click Hardware Connections. The Hardware Connections dialog box appears.
2. To disable system ID checking, turn on Ignore mismatched system ID.
3. To disable system timestamp checking, turn on Ignore mismatched system
timestamp .
4. Click Close.
After the hardware connections are set, you can confirm system ID and system
timestamp matching by performing the following steps:
1. Click Hardware Connections.
2. In the Hardware Connections dialog box, click System ID Properties.
3. Check that the Expected system ID and Actual system ID values match, and that
the Expected system timestamp and Actual system timestamp values match.
4. In the System ID Properties dialog box, click Close.
5. In the Hardware Connections dialog box, click Close.
For additional information about the system ID and system timestamp, refer to
Table 3–2 on page 3–2 .
1
Regardless of the System ID component values, you cannot program flash memory if
the hardware design configured in the FPGA is not a valid flash programmer target
design that contains at least the minimum component set specified in
Table 1–1 on
page 1–3 .
Generating Flash Files and Programming Flash Memory
The Nios II Flash Programmer can generate flash files, program the flash memory
with a flash file, or both. The flash programmer can generate flash files from the
following different file types:
■ SRAM Object File (.sof) — Contains FPGA configuration data
■ Executable and Linking Format File (.elf)— Contains your executable application
software
■ Altera Zip Read-Only File System File (.zip) — Contains a read-only zip file
system associated with your Nios II software application project
■ An arbitrary binary file
f The Nios II EDS provides the Altera Zip Read-Only File System software component,
which is an easy-to-use tool for storing and accessing data in flash memory.
Depending on your application, you might find it more convenient to use the Zip
Read-Only File System, rather than storing raw binary data in flash memory. For
information about the Altera Zip Read-Only File System, refer to the
Read-Only Zip
File System chapter in the Nios II Software Developer’s Handbook.