Nios II

Thanks for the help! I wasn&#39;t aware of the legacy component folder in the SOPC builder. One I used it, the application works perfectly! I was using the Nios2 on chip memory. When you select ROM, a note at the bottom appears (<device name> will be loaded using <device name.hex>). I confirmed this looking at the VHDL generated for my on chip memory device. Does Nios2 support the s part?

I have not used the HAL/IDE yet because of various reasons. The first one is I don&#39;t have JTAG on my dev board. I would have to lift/cut/jumper the 100 pin TSOP to have this. Second, I just became familiar with the SDK and don&#39;t want to mess up my evaluation with learning something new. I wanted to compare apples with apples (Nios1, Nios2). Third, after reading APP350, I didn&#39;t like some of the changes. The SDK code looked much more object oriented. For example:

SDK:

pio->np_piodata = bits;

bits = pio->np_piodata;

HAL:

IOWR_ALTERA_AVALON_PIO_DATA(address, bits);

bits = IOWR_ALTERA_AVALON_PIO_DATA(address);

I prefere to write my code that looks like the SDK, instead of calling an obnoxiously named function/macro.

Dispite my preferences, I do however plan to evaluate the HAL/IDE, and will probably use it in future designs. I see the need for it, because in my own experience I had to write an abstraction layer for some of the devices that we interface to. You can quickly paint yourself in a corner by making the code too object oriented. One hardware change and your toast! Sometimes it&#39;s best to make things generic. My bias probably came from my impressions of the Nios1 sdk. I thought it was the best thing since sliced bread. http://forum.niosforum.com/work2/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif

Rick