How to read firmware from Altera's FPGA (Cyclone IV) with USB Blaster?

Question

I'm starting to investigate Altera's Cyclone IV FPGA to use in my projects. Now I borrowed from neighboring company a real device with USB Baster Rev.C. I'd try to use one instead of evaluation board which I don't have for the moment.

Before I will put any code into the device I'd like to download original firmware to make me possible to return the device to it's initial state at any moment.

However after I connected USB Blaster to the device via JTAG and run Programmer I did not find any "Read" button (as I usually see on AVR programmers GUIs):

Brief search in Internet did not help.

EDIT 1

It looks like there are additional memories on the board:

I used to connect via X4 (pointed with a big red arrow).

Answer 1

To read the device configuration, you have to connect to X5 instead of X4 (as pointed out by @Simon Richter). Change your settings to match what is shown below:

Click "Start" to read the configuration. When it finishes, you can set a file name and then click "Save File" as below:

Answer 2

There is no way to read back the current configuration.

If your development board is wired for JTAG mode, as it looks like from your screenshot, then simply writing a new configuration will update the FPGA only and leave the configuration flash alone, so a power cycle will reload the flash and everything is back to as it was before.

Answer 3

I don't know whether you can read or not via Quartus II the configuration as it is and let Quartus II translate you in VHDL/Verilog what was stored in the memory. One thing that can always be done is to read the content of your EPCS memory with a SPI reader, make the whole dump. Well, considering the memory space (>=16MB), you will more than probably create a MASSIVE .hex file. There are file splitters on the internet and as long as the .hex file is quite straightforward, you can directly read the split file with Notepad++ or Hexedit (better solution for raw files) for example. Maybe 128kbytes every single split file, or 256 tops, can be a correct volume. In theory, you wouldn't need to power the whole board, but only the EPCS Chip. By the way, maybe an Arduino correctly programmed can create the dump on an external microSD card provided you have one and the correct shield.

If it is only for a copy/paste of the configuration memory, it shall do the trick. I want to do that for my DE10-Nano kit. Hem, I have everything I need to do so : Arduino, mem card, shield, wires... I will probably try soon.

If it is for a reverse engineering, I wish you the best of luck!