Honored Contributor
Honored ContributorI'm using Nios 2 v1.0 with the Microtronix uClinux kernel on the Altera Stratix board.
Actually this all started when I agreed to evaluate the Nios 2 processor and compare my results to a Xilinx Chip running uClinux also. The idea was to run a dhrystone test with the same OS on each. The results should be obvious which one was faster. Also device utilization and Megacore vs Coregen IP costs are relevant as well as price. The first problem occured when the software form Altera wouldn't allow uClinux to install. Research on the forum revealed I needed to obtain Nios 2 V1.0, install, then install uCLinux and then install the svc pack to upgrade to Nois 2 v1.01. Since I didn't have a copy of v1.0 I was stuck for several days. This was due to a support engineer at Altera telling me the eval version on the forum wouldn't work. Well after several days of waiting for Nios 1.0 to arrive from Altera and reading the posts on the forum, I realized the engineer didn't know what he was talking about. The version here will work. So I did the installation at my house first. I then attempted to compile and load the kernel & file system. I immediately started receiving the error "inttypes.h : no such file or directory". This was being called by line 3 in gen_crc32table.c When running the configure kernel program the option CRC32 functions was disabled. So I was unable to select Y or N. The only option was '---'. This was accomplished by following the directions as stated in the quick start guide. I tried for several evenings to fix this problem. Finally I deleted Nios from my machine and made sure all directories related to it were deleted. I then reinstalled and that problem seemed to go away. This was after other attempts to solve the problem. Next when I followed the quick start guide again and created the file system ( which went smoothly) I discovered the upload process didn't work. I still haven't figured that one out. I've since taken the board back to work and it compiles and downloads properly. i don't understand why, I'm using Win 2000 on both machines, and have the same environment variables. Now for the latest issue. My idea is to set up the compact flash card as a drive and download applications to it using FTP. This way I can download and run the dhrystone program. I'm still working on this as I've posted above. Maybe some of this should be as an appendix or here on the forum. Either would work. It would have saved me days of research if it had. Maybe a mini FAQ could be started with things like commands used in the SOPC builder, linux commands and their arguments, what scripts are being called and when... Page 18 of the Linux manual needs to be revamped completely. Expound a little more on how these are set up. It is a critical issue. I ultimately cut and pasted out of rules.mak into makefile to compile the .c code from the dhrystone directory. That took several hours of trial and error. Of course I don't know what all the parameters mean, an explanation of the more common ones would definitely help. A better example to use would be to describe how to compile the c code instead of just linking the object files. Some of the examples don't have .o files. I think adding these details will shorten the learning curve for the next beginner with linux. If you know of web sites that have info on operation of linux/unix and other details,please post them. Centralizing the details would help a lot. I really want to get this project working. Whatever processor has the best performance/price ratio is what we'll go with. However as I said, the xilinx test was completed in 3-4 evenings. John K.
