Hi koorosh,
> let us know if there are certain steps that need to be taken to be able to start
> running off of a .elf file.
All you should have to do is open a shell window and execute:
$ nios2-download -g file.elf
You might also want to make sure the sections are mapped to meaningful
memory regions. You can use objdump for this:
$ nios2-elf-objdump -h file.elf
If everything looks good, but you're still having problems, you might want
to use nios2-console -- this will let you load, peek, poke, whatever.
Regards,
--Scott