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Got it to work. Turned on the small C library and changed the NIOS so that it didn't have a cache. This made it easier to track each instruction in modelsim. Disabling the full C library made the sim run faster. Evidently the processor takes quite a while in simulation to boot up and load the necessary data, so changing settings to speed up this process works better. For simulation purposes on larger designs in the future I think that I'll have to simulate it overnight and optimizing the sim so that it won't take forever.
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can you please tell me how do you keep track of nios instructions execution in modelsim?
and how to simulate our design when there is one custom component inside the qsys system?
I appreciate if you attach any tutorial or picture of your qsys system.
thanks