Honored Contributor
Honored ContributorTo answer my own question: turns out that the Modelsim service packs are, in fact, cumulative. The
process that worked for me was to download both service packs: 11.1_173_modelsim_ase_linux.sh 11.1sp2_259_modelsim_ase_linux.sh And apply them in that order. When the 11.1sp2 service pack asks for a directory, give it the directory were 11.1_173 was installed. I also obtained a license for Quartus webpack & Modelsim using the Altera portal licensing page (note that the Modelsim license, at least when I retrieved it, is good for about 6 months. Final step was to point the LM_LICENSE_FILE shell environment variable to the license.dat file that Altera mailed me. At this point, the modelsim UI at least comes up. Next step is to see if I can simulate. The key realization came from downloading the two files - I noticed that 11.1_173 was about twice the size of 11.1sp2 - to me, that suggested a cumulative patch. The naming convention of the releases (11.1sp2 in particular), given the simularity to the Quartus release names, had me assuming they were standalone releases. Not sure if anyone at Altera reads this forum, but surely it can't be the case that the small savings in downloaded bytes (700M vs 389M) is worth the potential confusion it creates. "Free" is great, but mighty expensive when the better part of a day was burned trying to unravel the secret ingredients required to get a working configuration.
