Mesa 5i24 recovery

Hi everyone,

I have a problem with 5i24_25. I managed to write errorous bitfile into card (program compillated for 25 variant but hardware set to 16). Now the card is in state when both LEDs are always on. When I tried to read out card information I get :
So after reading several threads I decided to update mesaflash to last version 3.4.1 and use recover function, but without any success. As I understand at this point card is not even capable of booting and communicating over PCI because of wrong bitfile.

After reading documentation for the card, I tried to switch card to secondary backup EEPROM (jumper W7) and was able to read IO configuration a write default bitfile.

So my question is, am I capable with starting card out of secondary EEPROM to repair/overwrite primary EEPROM ? Or should I start looking for JTAG programmer ?

If any of this sounds like nonsense, I will be glad if you correct me. At this point I have no idea what to do next.

Thanks for any suggestions.

You can fix this by starting from the secondary EEPROM
and then moving the jumper to select the primary EEPROM
with the system powered up, then running mesaflash to
re-write the primary EEPROM with a working bitfile

If you corrupt both EEPROMs, you will need JTAG to recover...

BTW a safer way to try a new bitfile is to write it to the fallback area:

sudo mesaflash --device 5i24 --write test.bit --fallback
write the test bitfile into the EEPROM

sudo mesaflash --device 5i24 --reload --fallback
load the FPGA from the fallback area

If you load a bad bitfile this way, a power cycle will recover

Thank you PCW, it worked on first try.

I read this in documentation, but was really unsure removing jumper while system is running.

Thanks also for the advice. Next time I am definitely using fallback area.

Ivo