Tools
The MAX+PLUS II development software is a fully integrated
programmable logic design environment that supports the Altera
FLEX and MAX programmable device families. Tutorials on using
the software are in the Hamblen and Furman book.
The software is installed on the machines in the
undergraduate lab. In addition, there are 20 machines with
parallel cables attatched to them. If you use the lab, use these
machines so that you have enough room to comfortably plug in your
altera boards.
It is highly recommended that you
install the software on your home machine. It is also recommended that
you install the latest version from Altera's Web page as oppossed
to the student version bundled with your book. Tips for doing
this follow.
Tips on installing the software
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The software is available from
http://www.altera.com/education/univ/unv-software.html.
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You have to obtain a license that is tied to your disk drive.
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You have to set up your BIOS so that the parallel port is in
ECP or EPP mode.
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You have to install the "byteblaster" drivers (look in
http://www.altera.com/support/solutions/spt-search_solutions.html for details on how to do
this).
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People who use VMware with Linux as the host operating
system have been able to get the software working with a
Windows guest operating system. You need version 3.1 or
later and make sure to look at the VMware Web page for
information on configuring your parallel port.
Data sheets and manuals can be found here.
Version 2.6 of ACL2 is available locally for linux machines at ~manolios/public/acl2/v2.6-linux-allegro/saved_acl2
and for solaris machines at ~manolios/public/acl2/v2.6-solaris-allegro/saved_acl2.
(The above links get you to the directories in which the ACL2
executables reside only if you are running your browser on a CoC
machine.)
On the Windows machines, ACL2 is available in
S:\apps\acl2\v2.6-windows\saved_acl2.exe.
If you want to install ACL2, look at the ACL2 Web page for
instructions. You need a common lisp compliant lisp. A free
lisp that I recommend is GCL. Perhaps the easiest thing to do is
to use an existing executable. You can get a Windows executable
at http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~manolios/saved_acl2.exe.
For Linux, use a GCL rpm to install GCL, and then installing ACL2
is easy: just follow the instructions on the ACL2 Web page.
Read appendix A of Computer-Aided Reasoning (CAR) for
information on using the ACL2 system. Appendix B also contains
useful information. Finally, the Hyper-Card for ACL2 Programming is a consise Web page with
useful information for beginners.
Here are some tips on debugging in
ACL2.
Emacs is
the extensible, customizable, self-documenting real-time display
editor. Most ACL2 users run ACL2 inside of an Emacs shell buffer.
See Appendix A, Section A.3.5 of CAR for more information. In
addition, the subdirectory emacs of the ACL2
distribution contains files (e.g., emacs-acl2.el)
containing emacs commands that
simplify ACL2/Emacs interaction.
Emacs is available both on the Unix
(/usr/local/bin/emacs) and Windows environments (in the
directory C:\emacs-20.7\bin\).