ALTERA DE2 Development and Education Board

Cyclone II EP2C35F672 with ~35,000 LEs
8MB SDRAM, 512K SRAM, and 4MB Flash
TV decoder, Ethernet, RS232, and USB Host/Device


The DE2 package contains all components needed to use the
DE2 board in conjunction with a
computer that runs the Microsoft Windows software.

The DE2 package includes:
• DE2 board
• USB Cable for FPGA programming and control
• CD-ROM containing the DE2 documentation and supporting materials, including the User
Manual, the Control Panel utility, reference designs and demonstrations, device datasheets,
tutorials, and a set of laboratory exercises
• CD-ROMs containing Altera’s Quartus® II 5.0 Web Edition software and the Nios® II 5.0
embedded processor
• Bag of six rubber (silicon) covers for the DE2 board stands. The bag also contains some
extender pins, which can be used to facilitate easier probing with testing equipment of the
board’s I/O expansion headers
• Clear plastic cover for the board
• 9V DC wall-mount power supply


The DE2 Board Assembly
To assemble the included stands for the DE2 board:
• Assemble a rubber (silicon) cover, as shown in Figure 1.2, for each of the six copper stands
on the DE2 board
• The clear plastic cover provides extra protection, and is mounted over the top of the board
by using additional stands and screws


The DE2 board has many features that allow the user to implement a wide range of designed
circuits, from simple circuits to various multimedia projects.
The following hardware is provided on the DE2 board:
• Altera Cyclone® II 2C35 FPGA device
• Altera Serial Configuration device - EPCS16
• USB Blaster (on board) for programming and user API control; both JTAG and Active Serial
(AS) programming modes are supported
• 512-Kbyte SRAM
• 8-Mbyte SDRAM


• 4-Mbyte Flash memory (1 Mbyte on some boards)
• SD Card socket
• 4 pushbutton switches
• 18 toggle switches
• 18 red user LEDs
• 9 green user LEDs
• 50-MHz oscillator and 27-MHz oscillator for clock sources
• 24-bit CD-quality audio CODEC with line-in, line-out, and microphone-in jacks
• VGA DAC (10-bit high-speed triple DACs) with VGA-out connector
• TV Decoder (NTSC/PAL) and TV-in connector
• 10/100 Ethernet Controller with a connector
• USB Host/Slave Controller with USB type A and type B connectors
• RS-232 transceiver and 9-pin connector
• PS/2 mouse/keyboard connector
• IrDA transceiver
• Two 40-pin Expansion Headers with diode protection