No "Hello World" appears on the console.

Of course there are example softwares like "hello word" that work with altera board out-of-the-box :

If Quartus + Nios II are completely installed , when you create a "hello word" from template in nios ii sbt (or ide), you could choose an altera factory qsys (or sopc).

To choose JTAG_UART as default UART (linked to stdin, stdout, (stderr)), enter in the Board Support Package (BSP) (or system_library if you are using Quartus < 10). But I remember that I ran "Hello word" without modifying anything : I have an Altera Nios II dev board (cyclone II FPGA)

The "minimal designs" as you said are available in Quartus subdirectories (i am not sure now) or at www.altera.com see devboards (there are zip files) to find the .sof

For me, I need to start NIOS II SBT (12.0sp1) twice to successfully download a software to my board.

If you can't see nios2 console tab in Eclipse and you are not afraid with command line, you can open a windows shell and type something like "c:\altera\12.0sp1\nios2eds\bin\nios2-terminal.exe"

I guess it is not a FIFOed UART that needs to be flushed in order to be passed through the wires.

i don't know arria v starter kit.

EDIT:

Nice, you found !

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I copied the archived project [...]. The QUARTUS [...] and somehow in programming the FPGA the device type had become unknown.

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Did you copy the project with the "archive project" or "copy project" fonction of Quartus ?

Which version of Quartus ?