Some very basic questions

I, too, started working with Cyclone III and Nios Ide about a month ago and I had only a minimal background in fpga programming (I had used fpga only for integrating very basic logic functions, no processors)

Also started with a complex dev board and reference design; anyway after a few days I could work quite easily with the dev tools. It was simpler than I expected.

I suggest you start with one of the reference designs which comes with your kit and then make small changes to test how it works.

The design flow is roughly the following:

- with sopc builder you define your Nios system, namely your processor with all its peripherals and interfaces

- sopc builder then generates:

-1: a macro function block which can be synthesized in the fpga

-2: a system file used in Nios IDE

- use Quartus schematics or hdl to instantiate the sopc block into the fpga

- build the Quartus project, then configure the fpga

- at this point the fpga behaves like a normal discrete processor, so you can use the IDE to build , load and debug the software.

Regards

Cris