General questions from a first time user...

Hi,

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Thank you for the small tutorial. I had a few problems getting it going, being that I have learned to run before I can walk, but persistence paid off, and I was able to generate the qwork directory.

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It sounds like you did not read the readme.txt file included with the example. I have updated the zip file and removed the qwork folder (to avoid the confusion it caused).

Please follow the readme.txt instructions (repeated here):

Terasic DE1 'basic' example
---------------------------
4/25/2012 D. W. Hawkins (dwh@ovro.caltech.edu)
Terasic DE1 Cyclone II FPGA kit 'basic' design.
Counters are used to blink or generate counts using the three
onboard clock sources as follows;
 * KEY is used as the reset input
 * KEY drive the 3 MSBs of the red LEDs
 * 7 switches connected to 7 of the 10 red LEDs.
 * 8 green LEDs blinked using the 24MHz clock
 * Hexadecimal displays A and B count based on the 27MHz clock
 * Hexadecimal displays C and D count based on the 50MHz clock
The design can be synthesized as follows;
1. Unzip the example design into 
   c:/temp/de1_basic
   
   when using windows to unzip the file, unzip
   de1_basic.zip into c:/temp and the folder
   c:/temp/de1_basic will be created.
2. Start Quartus II.
3. Click in the Tcl console.
   If the Tcl console is not visible, bring it up
   using View->Utility Windows->Tcl console
   
4. Use the Tcl console to change to the directory to
   the de1_basic/ folder, eg., at the Tcl console type
   tcl> cd {c:\temp\de1_basic}
   
   Where 'tcl>' is the console prompt.
   
   The parathases {} pass the Windows format directory
   to Tcl as a list variable. This allows you to copy
   and paste the directory path from Windows Explorer.
   
5. Run (source) the synthesis script
   tcl> source scripts/synth.tcl
   
   The Tcl console will then output the build sequence:
     Synthesizing the DE1 'basic' design
     -----------------------------------
      - Quartus Version 13.0.1 Build 232 06/12/2013 Service Pack 1 SJ Full Version
      - Creating the Quartus work directory
        * C:/Temp/de1_basic/qwork
      - Create the project 'de1'
        * create a new de1 project
      - Creating the VHDL files list
      - Applying constraints
      - Processing the design
      - Processing completed
6. Download the design
   Plug in the DE1 USB-Blaster and download the .sof file.
   The LEDs and hex displays should start to blink/count.
   Read the comments in src/de1.vhd for details on the basic design.
Enjoy!
Cheers,
Dave
7/12/2014: Checked synthesis with Quartus 13.0sp1.
           Updated the readme.txt. No code changes.

Cheers,

Dave