USB Blaster Cheap Clone ======================= The Altera USB Blaster has a cheap clone, based on : - a Cypress CY7C68013A-56PVXC as the main chip - a 74HC244D as the output latch - a 24 MHz quartz - a EEPROM 24C64BN The schematics (cut down to essential) is : /-----------------+----------------------\ +--------------+ | | | USB--| CY7C68013A | | +----------+ | | | | | | 74HC244D | | | . . | | | | | . . \--o 1 20 o | 10 pins header | | 47 o-- TCK --o 2 19 o---/ +-------+ | | 46 o-- TDO --o 3 18 o-- TCK -----o 1 2 o | | 45 o-- TMS --o 4 17 o-- TDO -----o 3 4 o | | 44 o o 5 16 o-- TMS -----o 5 6 o | | 43 o-- o 6 15 o o 7 8 o | | 42 o-- o 7 14 o +--o 9 10 o | | 41 o-- TDI --o 8 13 o-- ? | +-------+ | . 40 o-- nOE \ o 9 12 o-- TDI --+ | . . | o 10 11 o | o 28 29 o | | | | | | | +----------+ | +--------------+ \ | ---------------------------------------/ From this one can deduce that : - the cypress emulates the Altera chip - as the cypress pins used are 41-47, all output/input are controlled by 8051 PortA. - as the 8051 is clocked at 24Mhz, and because each USB byte is handled by the 8051, assuming a 40 instruction cycles per USB packet, the maximum throughput would be around 500 kHz. Pinout ====== Port A.0: nOE (output enable of 74HC244D) Port A.1: TDI Port A.5: TMS Port A.6: TDO Port A.7: TCK Throughput considerations ========================= Measurements on a scope reveal that : - for bitbang mode, the throughput is 56.5 kbits/s (as each clock transition is measured at 17.7us) - for byteshift mode, the throughput is 107.7 kbits/s (as 63 bits TDI transmission is measured in 585 us) Let's suppose that to upload a 32 bits value, it is necessary to : - move from IDLE to DR-SHIFT : 3 bitbang (3 TMS transitions) - input the 32 bits of data : 1 byteshift (24 bits) + 8 bitbang (8 bits) - move from DR-SHIFT to IDLE : 5 bitbang (5 TMS transitions) So for this 32 bits of data, the time would be : 3 * 17.7us + 1 * 585us/63*24 + 5 * 17.7us = 53.1us + 222us + 88.5us = 363us Throughput in bit/s: 32 * (1 / 363E-6) = 88000 bits/s Throughput in bytes/s: 11kBytes/s Conclusion ========== Contrary to the original USB Blaster, the cheap clone will never reach high transfer speeds over JTAG.