The files in this example are from Prefred. There are two MaxPlusII projects: control and bsctof. Specifically, in this example they are located in U:\users\maryh\bsctof_9_6 and control_9_6. These files were created in MaxPlusII version 9.6. This example was done with Quartus 7.1.

It doesn't matter which project you do first. We'll start with bsctof.

1. Open Quartus (which is available on all windows computers in the eshop)
File -> Convert MAX+PLUS II Project...

In the window that comes up, under the Max+Plus II file name, click the ... button and go to u:\users\maryh\bsctof_9_6 and select bsctof.acf and click Open. Then OK. You'll get a window about converting the project, click OK. You should have no errors.

2. If you have any changes that you want to make to the project, open the file by double-clicking on the bsctof file shown in the left-side panel. Save any changes you make.

3. Check the pins are already assigned, go to Assignments -> Assignment Editor. Notice that all the pins have values, so they are already set. Then close the Assignment Editor and go back to the tdf file.

4. Go to Project -> Add Current File to Project (If this is grayed out, the file has already been added.)

5. Go to Project -> Add/Remove Files in Project, check that the file is an ahdl file and not a vhdl file. If the type is VHDL, highlight the name of the file and go to Properties. There change the Type to AHDL. Then Ok twice.

6. We're ready to compile. Processing -> Start Compilation. This will take some time, depending on how large the project is. In version 7.1 of Quartus, there is a bug that causes the EDA Netlist Writer to crash, just ignore this. We don't need a netlist. (If the error bothers you, you can get around it by changing the output netlist to verilog from vhdl.)

7. After compilation, look in u:\users\maryh\bsctof_9_6 for bsctof.sof. That is the sof file you need.

8. Repeat steps 1-7 with the control project.

9. Now we need to combine the two sof files into pof file that we can use. File -> Convert Programming Files. For this project, the Configuration Device is EPC1. Change the File Name from output_file.pof to whatever you want the output file to be. Two files will be created here <file>.pof and <file>_1.pof. Now click on Add File and select the bsctof.sof file. Then highlight SOF Data and click Add File again. This time add the control.sof file.

Note that the order in which you add the files in not important. You can change the order after they're in. For this project, the TOP file should be control.sof and the bottom file should be bsctof.sof.

Click Generate.

Your files will be saved wherever you specified, which is usually inside the project folder that you had open last. Both of the pof files should be 128kb in size.

10. Program the chips. Tools -> Programmer. Add File and select bsctof.pof. It should now show in the list. Check "Program/Configure", "Verify" and "Blank-Check". Put a chip in the programmer and click start. When chip is finished, highlight file and select change file. Choose the other file and repeat with a new chip.

Put the chips in the PreFred board and turn the crate on. Initially, on PreFred the +5V and Load lights should come on. On computer blue, there is a program called vme (in ~carla/bin) that can be used to read from and write to the crate. Enter it by itself to see the syntax.

Samples of vme:

vme yellow write 18 0 32 --writes 32 to address 0 (board is in slot 18)
vme yellow read 18 0 --reads address 0 (should see 32 come up)

vme yellow write 18 c 1000001 --turns on front panel run light and turns off front panel load light
vme yellow write 18 c 0 --turns on front panel load light and turns off front panel run light

-Mary Heintz
27 September 2007