Using DE2 board with Quartus and NIOS IDE Version 8

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Did you try re-generating (and compiling) the SOPC system and then compiling and using your old projects? Simply importing old projects in the new version without recompiling the SOPC system will not work.

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No. I opened the system with SOPC builder version 8 and got a lot of messages that system parts were automatically replaced. A Generate was possible. However, I did not compile the generated system since I assumed that the pin assignments were lost and it would be a tedious and error-prone work to reassign all. I simply hoped that the HAL provided with NIOS IDE version 8 would work with the hardware generated with version 7.2.

Now, with your help, I know that I have the choice either to use the old version (7.2) or to recreate the hardware including assignment of pins.