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Bhaumik, I shall try that. I gave up interfacing the ADC directly to the NIOS II through code, and fed the output of the ADC from one of the hardware-only examples directly into 12 I/O ports into the NIOS II. It's kind of a back-door way of doing it, but it works. It is just frustrating, the lack of examples on how to actually connect the dots in Qsys. That, and it was SOPC Builder, then it was Qsys for a little while, now it's Platform Designer, so there are bits and pieces of information scattered all over the place. A comprehensive "this is how you build things with Platform Designer, and here are all the little pitfalls" would be nice.
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This is exactly the information i am also seeking. I have been contemplating a non Platform Designer/Qsys integrated ADC block, just as Joe641 has done, and was taking a last sweep before taking this route, after several days of research. Thanks for the confirmation that the approach works, Joe641. Thanks for the links, Bhaumik.