Newbie question: driving leds

Ok, so now I see what you are planning to do. That Tutorial, I would edit some parts. At 2.1.3 and 2.1.5 I would recommend, to just look what is printed on the Chip and select exactly that device. So just select Cyclone III and find the right device in the list.

3.1 others then in your screenshot the F type cpu was selected in the project I downloaded.

3.2 I would advise to directly take more ram, because the LED-Code already uses up 18Kb I think.

3.3 Add 4Bit PIO

4. lokk into niostest_inst.v instead of niostest.v I would also recommend to keep the _n and take it over to the toplevel file, so that you later on can see, that it is active low pin.

You have not described how to assign the pins. You can import the Pin-Settings easily from a csv Altera provides. I have attached it to the thread. Try Import-Pin assignments in quartus (danger, that one is with the T1 LED Pin)

You will have to keep the openCore connection window open too work with the nios CPU. Perhaps you add that at the bottom of your Tutorial. The rest is really fine written, with nice Screenshots.

Wanna see more of that tutorials. Perhaps do some things with uart in the c-code, add some buttons or do some other things where you can interact with the board. But also be warned, the vga and lcd are not so easy to access on the neek, because of the MAX chip. So perhaps don't try that as second project.

Have fun good luck. That's it from me. no more time now. CU