This is version 0.1 of this package, dated April 23, 2009.
These files are an attempt to re-target University of Toronto's TM-4 ports package to the Altera DE-2 and DE-3 boards.
The ports package allows you to easily transfer data between a program on your workstation and a circuit running in a board.
This implementation of the ports package transfers the data using the JTAG connection to the board. On the DE-2 and DE-3, JTAG information is transferred over the USB Blaster cable. This is the same communication path that Quartus uses to program the FPGA, and that SignalTap uses to capture debugging information.
This implementation works, but the performance is disappointing. We see data transfer speeds on the order of 50K bytes/second from the computer to the circuit, but only 5K bytes/second from the circuit to the computer. We are hoping to build a faster version someday by using a direct USB link, but that may never happen, so we are releasing this one.
To install it, you need to install tmj.sh, tmjports and tmjportmux_gen. Modify the makefiles to set the pathnames to something reasonable. At the same time, fix up the pathnames at the top of tmj.sh and tmjportmux_gen.sh.
To use it, create a designname.ports file that describes the communication ports on your design, following the examples in the ports package document. Run
tmj designname.ports
This should run tmjportmux_gen.sh, which will create a tmj_portmux.v file. Add this module to your design, and connect its inputs and outputs to the similarly named ports on your design. It will also create the files simple_dual_port_ram_single_clock.v and virtual1.v, which are used by tmj_portmux.v to buffer data and talk to the JTAG interface respectively. It will also copy designname.ports to fpga0.ports. Put fpga0.ports in the directory where you will run the program that communicates with your design, so it can get information about the ports on your design.
Now you can write the program that talks to the design. The library functions in tmjports.a allow you to initialize the communication (tminit("")), open a port (tm_open()) and transfer data (tm_read() and tm_write()).
Download your re-compiled design. Run your program in a directory that has the fpga0.ports file. Make sure that you have the quartus_stp program on your path, so that tm_init() can start it up in the background.
If anything goes wrong, you may be able to look at the information being transferred between the routines in tmjports.a and quartus_stp. You'll have to uncomment some or all of the printf statements in tmports.c, and re-build tmjports.a and your program.
There is an example design in examples/counter. It is a simple circuit that returns a 32-bit value which is incremented every time it is read. You will have to change the path names in the makefile in order to compile it.