CycloneIII 3c120 kit has very old factory configuration

[Altera_Forum]

It seems, that the Kit that I received recently does contain a very old version of the factory configuration! The paper document of the User Guide is from August 2008. 

 Looking at the newest version of the kit on the download page, I realize, that there has changed a lot. But when trying to restore factory default for the release 91 (since I currently would like to use Quartus WebEdition 9.1sp2) for the kit, I can not start the flash programming as stated in the user guide.  After successfully loading the pfl.sof, trying to add the m2_prod.pof to the line CFI_512MB (by double clicking) I get the error "Only Flash Memory Programmer Object File is supported".  Since I am a complete beginner, I feel lost! The kit is not up to date and I have to find out how to bring it to the current version! This is not what I expect from a new product!  any help is much appreciated

[Altera_Forum]

I share your pain. I have been struggling for months getting sample designs as well as custom designs to work with the CycloneIII 3c25 NiosII Embedded Development Kit. One of the problems, as you mentioned, is that most of the sample designs and support literature are for outdated versions of the development tools.  

 FINALLY I have come across a design example specifically for this dev kit that is entirely in version 11.0 of the Quartus II tools. Like just about everything from Altera, it doesn't work out of the box, so I am having to work out some glitches in the the example C code (unfortuatey not my forte), but otherwise it appears to be a very clean design that is well documented (a first for Altera, I believe).  I suggest that you jump right in with the latest version of the Altera development tools (version 11.0) since you are just staring out anyway. It uses Qsys rather than SOPC builder, which are very similar, but you can be sure that the support for SOPC Builder will eventually evaporate. As far as I can tell with my limited experience with it, Qsys seems to be an improvement over SOPC Builder.  Here is a link to the sample design: http://www.altera.com/support/examples/nios2/exm-net-std-de.html  Good luck with your project.

[Altera_Forum]

Hi - I dont see any QSys-eness about that download it cites SOPC builder in readme.txt (unless I am blind and cant see the QSys projects) 

 I have been trying for 2 days now to port it to QSys ... the SOPC import facility just plain old doesnt work straight up as is.   Has anyone got a 3C25 NEEK or starter board project running with the DDR??     --- Quote Start ---  I share your pain. I have been struggling for months getting sample designs as well as custom designs to work with the CycloneIII 3c25 NiosII Embedded Development Kit. One of the problems, as you mentioned, is that most of the sample designs and support literature are for outdated versions of the development tools.    FINALLY I have come across a design example specifically for this dev kit that is entirely in version 11.0 of the Quartus II tools. Like just about everything from Altera, it doesn't work out of the box, so I am having to work out some glitches in the the example C code (unfortuatey not my forte), but otherwise it appears to be a very clean design that is well documented (a first for Altera, I believe).   I suggest that you jump right in with the latest version of the Altera development tools (version 11.0) since you are just staring out anyway. It uses Qsys rather than SOPC builder, which are very similar, but you can be sure that the support for SOPC Builder will eventually evaporate. As far as I can tell with my limited experience with it, Qsys seems to be an improvement over SOPC Builder.   Here is a link to the sample design: http://www.altera.com/support/examples/nios2/exm-net-std-de.html   Good luck with your project.  --- Quote End ---  

[Altera_Forum]

--- Quote Start ---  Hi - I dont see any QSys-eness about that download it cites SOPC builder in readme.txt (unless I am blind and cant see the QSys projects)   I have been trying for 2 days now to port it to QSys ... the SOPC import facility just plain old doesnt work straight up as is.   Has anyone got a 3C25 NEEK or starter board project running with the DDR??  --- Quote End ---    Hi Steve,  I see what you mean about the readme file - it doesn't mention anything about Qsys. Must be an old design that they ported to Qsys from SOPC and didn't update the documentation. Might as well get used to it if you want to work with Altera, though. This forum is about the only way to get any answers and solutions to the multitude of "issues" that lurk around every corner.  However, this particular example that I referenced really is designed around Qsys rather than SOPC Builder and it actually does work on the Cyclone III NEEK dev kit. I presume you downloaded the niosii-ethernet-standard-3c25.zip file and extracted the files. Look carefully and you will see three Qsys files:  eth_std_main_system.qsys ethernet_system.qsys peripheral_system.qsys  To view the Qsys desgin, launch the niosii_ethernet_standard_3c25.qpf file in Quartus II, then click on the Qsys icon in the toolbar, or select Qsys from the Tools menu. This will call up a dialog box to select which Qsys file you want to load into Qsys. Select eth_std_main_system.qsys to view the main design. This is a hierarchical design which has two submodules. To view those you have to open their respective .qsys file in Qsys.  Please let me know if this doesn't work or have further questions about the example.