In the HL2+ forum one of the members mentioned that you don’t install the USB Blaster as a USB device, BUT AS A JTAG CABLE DEVICE. But recently I had a need to re-install mine to not only to reprogram a Lime Mini, but also to reflash my Hermes Lite II to a new gateware version. Well, those days are over…No more will you have to fight to install the Chinese Clone USB Blaster or make unnecessary resistor modifications to it - none of that is needed to make it work with ANY version of the Quartus-Lite programming tool…Keep reading…Īs it turns out, most users thought that you needed to install the USB Blaster as a USB device…I thought this was a reasonable thing to do, too. There was a version of Quartus that didn’t do this (version 16.1) but it was usually hard to find and wasn’t available to most users. This usually created the need to uninstall the USB Blaster and try it again…to no avail.

Some have found when setting this up with the clone (read here Chinese) ‘Altera’ USB Byte Blasters using various versions of the programming application, Quartus II, that if you’re using Windows 10 (and even the recently expired Windows 7, let’s not even discuss Windows 8) that plugging in the USB Blaster into your USB port on your PC when the application has been installed created a confounding issue where the drivers for the application would install the it as a USB device and immediately cause the PC to enter the ‘Blue Screen of Death’ - nobody likes to see that. On occasion it’s been necessary to reprogram the LimeSDR or Lime-Mini using the JTAG port on the Lime of choice and an Altera USB Byte Blaster.

Byteblaster Altera Driver