installation of nios II 5.0 Full edition

[Altera_Forum]

I installed quartus 5.0 and subsequently Nios II (v?.?) 5.0 full version on a machine with Q4.2 and Nios II v1.1. 

 By default, the installer of Nios is apparently set to install on-top of the exisiting Nios II (in my case ....\kits\nios2_v1.1 ).  Question: Is this because I can not have two versions of Nios installed at the same time?  Previous version (Q4.2's nios II) had revision 1.1.  Question: Has this been changed to track the quartus release numbering, i.e. Nios II 5.0 now?  Its somewhat confusing as to what the release number is refering to: The Sopc builder or the Nios core or both?  Thanks for any clarifications.

[Altera_Forum]

Hi Larsen, 

I've installed Quartus 5.0 and Nios II 5.0 too. You can have two version of Nios installed: I have Quartus 4.2 linked with Nios II 1.1 and Quartus 5.0 linked with Nios II 5.0. You have to update an environment variable each time u run a different Quartus version: SOPC_KIT_NIOS2=C:\altera\kits\nios2_1_1 (your Nios II path alligned with the Quartus version) I have created a file .bat to do this.

[Altera_Forum]

Yes, the version went from 1.1 --> 5.0 to keep it the same as Quartus. Nios releases are now synchronized with Quartus and this makes it simpler -- one box is shipped to you with the latest release of everything. 

 As for multiple installations, yes those are allowed and the above post about environment variables is a good suggestion. However, you should be careful to install both Nios & Quartus installations in different folders. For example, my tools are like this:  c:\altera ...nios2_1.1 ...nios2_5.0 ...quartus2_4.2 ...quartus2_5.0  just ensure that those are separated. Installing "on top" of an existing folder will probably break things and is not reccomended (the installer should tell you this as well).

[Altera_Forum]

One more thing to be careful with having mulitple installations is that you must make sure your workspaces don't overlap. Also I recommend upgrading your application software to 5.0 by: 

 1) Create a new system library in 5.0 2) Create a new application project in 5.0 3) Copy over your 1.1 code into your new application project  Creating new projects is quick and easy so it should take a minute or two and save you any headaches you may run into.

[Altera_Forum]

Thank you Jesse, Soin and BadOmen for the suggestions and clarifications. 

 May I suggest that Altera changes the installer for Nios II such that it by default installs into a path with a name reflecting the version at hand. Somewhat along the lines indicated by Jesse,<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div>  --- Quote Start ---  c:\altera ...nios2_1.1 ...nios2_5.0 ...quartus2_4.2 ...quartus2_5.0[/b]  --- Quote End ---  I think Quartus II does it already (...Altera\Quartus5.0), but as mentioned Nios does not. If there can be compatibilty problems from one release to the next this is a helpful feature.  Regards,

[Altera_Forum]

Hi Larsen, 

 Good idea! I have filed your suggestion as an enhancement request for a future Nios II release. I cannot guarantee it will be implemented but it will be considered.

[Altera_Forum]

I installed5.0sp1 and Nios5.0eval 

 As noted above, this breaks SOPC builder for previous versions.  The environ var fix noted above did NOT fix the problem. I had to un-install Nios5.0.   I can still see several environ vars that have been changed for 5.0 and were not restored, but at least SOPC seems to work again.

[Altera_Forum]

Correction. Even though I have uninstalled QII50, Nios5.0 and re-installed Nios1.0 +sp1, there are still problems. Re-generating my old projects in QII4.1 + SOPC4.1 results in extra pins appearing on certain components. In my case, the LAN91c111 component configured as a shared slave had two extra pins on the symbol, &#39;ardy&#39; and an extra wrn or rdn.  

 What do I need to do to remove the corrupting touch of Nios5.0, re-install QII4.0 too?  Have the old projects I&#39;ve opened been permanently corrupted? What a pain.  Bear in mind I did all my installations to differently named folders and still have this cross-contamination.  If there is a real solution to having the different versions co-exist, I&#39;d sure like to know.

[Altera_Forum]

Some components have been changed between versions so that&#39;s why you are seeing pin changes. I don&#39;t recommend going back and forth with the tools because of this reason. If you want to be absolutely sure you have a clean install of any Windows program you should uninstall it, delete the folder it was previously installed to (usually uninstallers leave something behind), install the new tools with a new folder name (i.e. nios2_5_0 for example). 

 If you have a design for one set of tools and you start going back and forth between different tool versions you are playing with fire. The errata has some information about parallel installs I think but do yourself a favour and stick to one.

[Altera_Forum]

If I have already messed up a project by opening it under 5.0, I need to know how to recover.  

If all I need to do is to delete and re-add the components, thats fine, but I am not finding the list of components that are affected by this change. I know the Lan91C111 is one. Are there others? Is is only avalon slaves?