Question about Nios2 Min system.

A1. Your memory is a RAM, and you (well it did this by default) have your reset address in that RAM. So when you power up the contents of that RAM will be undefined (volatile memory). But don't worry about that, you probably want to be able to download your code into that memory (you might want more memory though like 64k for example). Also since you are familiar with NIOS I, I recommend you avoid all the legacy stuff like the GERMS monitor, sdk, building from the cygwin prompt. Another thing you should know is to bypass the data cache you have to use IORD and IOWR macro calls or set bit 31 of the address to '1' to do the bypass (declaring volatile pointers does not do the bypass for you anymore, but with HAL you shouldn't need to do this anyway).

A2. Yes it is used by the NIOS II IDE (used with a few other things as well). The "JTAG UART" is the same thing as the "UART" (RS232) only over jtag. The Debug module allows you communicate with the NIOS II core over JTAG, debug, and download your code (so I think that is all you will need).

A3. nb (Nios Build) was for NIOS I. I recommend using the NIOS II IDE since the new HAL and interface is pretty nice (I hated it at first but after a few days I got over it and realized it was a much improved method to coding). NIOS II is project based so I recommend you read this: http://www.altera.com/literature/hb/nios2/...n2sw_nii5v2.pdf (http://www.altera.com/literature/hb/nios2/n2sw_nii5v2.pdf) (up to page 92 will give you the basics and how to use HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer)).

As a side note, I also recommend opening a sample reference design just to see how everything is set up (the hardware changes between NIOS I and NIOS II from the interface level are small, but the software side is almost completely new).

If you have more questions let us know and someone here will get back to you.

Cheers.