Problem with NIOS II

I am new to NIOS II. I have been trying to get familiar with UP3 development board, Quartus 4.5 and NIOS II.

I have created a simple hardware consisting of NIOS II CPU, JTAG UART, Timer, UP3_SRAM and Avalon Tri-State Bridge.

I have been able to compile it without any errors.

I then tried executing "Hello_World" program after programming the kit with the above hardware design.

After running the program, I didnt get any output on my console. The expected output was that the string "Hello from NIOS II!" should be printed on my console.

I then debugged the program. Before debugging, I checked the option "break at alt_main()" and unchecked the option "break at main()". When I started debugging I got the following error:

The execution of program is suspended because of error.

Warning:

Cannot insert breakpoint 1.

Error accessing memory address 0x97d4: (undocumented errno -1).

I have tried with another program where I am trying to print 3 strings. I am getting the same error. In this case, after I start debugging, I am able to step debug till the last statement in alt_main() which is

exit (main (alt_argc, alt_argv, alt_envp));

When I step into this instruction, the control instead of passing to main() passes _malloc_lock() in alt_malloc_lock.c. This is an empty function and on stepping over this function I get the above error again:

The execution of program is suspended because of error.

Warning:

Cannot insert breakpoint 1.

Error accessing memory address 0x97d4: (undocumented errno -1).

I have been trying to figure out this problem since last few days but havent been able to do so. As a last resort I am posting to the group. Kindly respond promptly with suggestions.

Thanks in advance.

Regards

Prashant Agrawal