NIOS boot loading

Hi guys,

I'm very interested in this issue, too. Somehow i have a similar problem as sgievounet.

I have a NIOS II System created in SOPC. I added an onchip ram ond onchip rom to the system. I set the reset vector of the NIOS CPU to the onchip rom. In the onchip rom details I checked the "user created initialization file" which in my case is just named rom.hex. Also, my system has an uart module for std out.

Now, I create the SOPC system. After that, I open the NIOS IDE and create a new C/C++ project with the "hello world small" settings with the SOPC Builder system as target hardware. I set the .text and .rodata to my onchip rom module. .rwdata, heap and stack is set to the onchip ram. stdout is my uart.

I build the syslib and the hello_world_small application. Everything works fine and ends successfully.

Now, I don't know, how to go on to bring my project to work on my hardware. I have custom hardware, which consits of a Cyclone EP1C3 and a configuration device EPCS1. The are set up to work in AS mode. There is no JTAG functionality. If I want to flash the EPCS from the Quartus II programmer, I have to use the AS mode there, too because in JTAG mode it says something like "no JTAG chain found . . . ".

What are the next steps I need to perform to get my design working on my hardware. I don't want to use any bootloaders. I would like to get the machine code on my defined reset vector which resides in the onchip rom.

The NIOS IDE says at the end of the hello_worl_small build process that it created a rom.hex file. I don't know, if this file contains my program or not. Up to now, I was not able to get it to work.

Please give me some advises.

Maik