Adding the Terasic USB Blaster to Ubuntu 13.10

When I tried to use my Terasic USB Blaster with Altera Quartus 13.0 tonight, the device was detecting but the JTAG programmer would report "fail" instantly upon attempting to program.

The problem was to do with the permissions device, and the following should fix that:

• Create a new file called "terasic-usb-blaster.rules" in the "/etc/udev/rules.d/" folder
• Simply add the following line to the otherwise empty file:

ATTR{idVendor}=="09fb", ATTR{idProduct}=="6001", MODE="666"

Thanks to http://www.eecg.toronto.edu/~laforest/USB-Blaster-Debian.html for explaining this solution!

Adding a Launcher to the Launch Bar in Ubuntu 13.10

So I installed Altera Quartus 13.0 (the final version to support the Cyclone II FPGA I'm using), and either I forgot to add a shortcut, or it didn't choose to add one (I know 13.1 did everything for me).

Anyway, to create one, here's what I did:

• Locate the executable (in this case "/opt/altera/13.0/quartus/bin/quartus")
• Locate an icon (optional, in this case "/opt/altera/13.0/quartus/adm/quartusii.png")
• Create a file in "/usr/share/applications" called <filename>.desktop (in this case "quartus.desktop")
• Open it in an editor and configure as shown below (adjusting the fields like Name, Exec (the executable), Icon, and if you like you can change the applications's Categories field to make searching and grouping of applications easier):

[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Name=Altera Quartus
Exec=/opt/altera/13.0/quartus/bin/quartus
Comment=Altera Quartus 13.0
Terminal=false
Icon=/opt/altera/13.0/quartus/adm/quartusii.png
Type=Application
Categories=IDE;Development
X-Ayatana-Desktop-Shortcuts=NewWindow
[NewWindow Shortcut Group]
Name=New Window
Exec=/opt/altera/13.0/quartus/bin/quartus
TargetEnvironment=Unity

• Now the link with selected icon. should appear in your applications menu when you click the icon at the top of your launch bar. Simply drag this into the desired position on your launch bar. Easy.

(On a side note, If you have problems creating and saving in the applications folder like I did, just move the file from another directory with root access.)