Beware: 7.2 is NOT Vista compatible

[Altera_Forum]

I had hoped that Altera would finally support Vista with this 7.2 release. Also their marketing is claiming that Quartus II is now Vista compatible. 

 It's NOT!  Quartus II 7.2 readme.txt looked promising: Vista is listed for both Quartus II and NIOS II, but not for Modelsim Altera Edition.  The Altera's Download pages listed Vista under Quartus download, but not for NIOS II. Some indication that something might be wrong ...  Since Altera seems to have a trend to publish Release Notes a week later than the actual software (like they did with 7.1 release!), I just have to install 7.2 and see what happens.  I had the old 7.1 release installed in Vista (since I had tried it out) but I had removed it.  I installed 7.2 without problems (although starting the 72_quartus_windows.exe took about 10 minutes because of Vista's new way to check compressed packages).  1) When starting Quartus II for the first time, it hangs showing just "Initializing Quartus" window. This problem was already present in 7.1. Quartus tries to run bblpt.exe and hangs. Killing bblpt.exe process make the Quatus initialization to continue, it gives a warning message but starts Quatus after all. When I rename the bblpt.exe bblpt.ex so that Quatus won't find it anymore, Quartus starts normally. Maybe this is some old driver issue from 7.1 installation. Otherwise it's an indication that 7.2 is NOT fully Vista compatible... I assume the actual compile operation in 7.2 works, since it worked already in 7.1, but I couldn't test compile because of the major problems in SOPC Builder...  2) SOPC builder disables Aero. No a big issue, but I belive Java packages causing this were updated early this year to be Vista compatible. Why hasn't Altera updated their Java components?  3) Old Custom Instructions in NIOS CPU won't work. Something has changed, I had to remove my own Custom Instruction module from NIOS CPU before I could even try generating the NIOS system.  4) When trying to edit the DDR/SDRAM Controller MegaCore Function, SOPC Builder gives error: "The module could not be edited". Maybe something has changed so dramatically, that I should remove the component and add it again, but why such extra work?  5) SOPC Builder's Generate command and NIOS tools just won't work in Vista! Both tools give the following type of errors:   89967747 [main] bash 5680 fork: child 5052 - died waiting for longjmp before  initialization, errno 11  bash: fork: Resource temporarily unavailable  This is most alarming issue, which has not changed at all since the 7.1 release.  Both SOPC Builder and NIOS tools use Cygwin tools, which are open source packages, but Altera uses RedHat's commercial version of the Cygwin package.  The Cygwin open source community had fixed this fork-problem almost a year ago!  Unfortunately Altera has not upgraded their Cygwin package, since the Cygwin package in 7.2 is the same as in 7.1 and 7.0!  Since this cygwin/fork issue makes the SOPC Builder and NIOS tools completely useless in Vista, I just can't understand why Altera even tries to market Quartus as Vista compatible!  Sure, by reading the "fine print" Altera's marketing only claims that *Quartus II* is Vista compatible (except that in readme.txt Vista is listed for NIOS too!) ...  But having only one of their three main tools to be Vista compatible is misleading.  So if you thought that Altera would finally catch up Vista with the 7.2 release, that's not the case.  And since the SOPC Builder still seems to have some other problems, I would say that this 7.2 release is the worst Quartus release from Altera ever ...   Jari

[Altera_Forum]

Hey JariS, I see that Altera has published a technical support Solution to clarify the support for Vista. Looks like readme was wrong about Nios - Although the main Quartus II tool supports Vista in 7.2, official support for Nios IDE and SOPC Builder on Vista is coming next release.  

 http://www.altera.com/support/kdb/solutions/rd09272006_364.html

[Altera_Forum]

JariS, Sorry you had trouble installing Quartus II software on Windows Vista. Our QA team puts significant effort in ensuring a high quality installation and OS support. I appreciate your effort in pointing out that our readme.txt is incorrect (we will update). For clarity, the Nios II EDS does not support Windows Vista yet. The plan is to support Windows Vista in early December when we release v7.2 SP1. Quartus II software does support Windows Vista (32-bit and 64-bit) with the exception of SOPC Builder; also planned for SP1. I have asked our applications/software engineering team to resolve the issues you described in your post with either production support, posting a solution (workaround) or a bug fix – all coming by SP1. If you can submit your issues via mySupport we may be able to provide a fix much sooner. 

 Thanks, Jordon Inkeles SW Marketing - Altera

[Altera_Forum]

And worst, Quartus 7.2 does not run on our Linux environment, 

only on xp.

[Altera_Forum]

Hi, 

 I seem to have gotten rid of the fork problem by dropping in a new cygwin1.dll into c:\altera\72\quartus\bin\cygwin\bin  I got the new cygwin1.dll from my cygwin installation.

[Altera_Forum]

which cygwin1.dll file did you use? can u post it or a link to it?

[Altera_Forum]

There were actually 2 problems that had to be fixed. First, the cygwin1.dll file. You can get it from any cygwin installation. Second is that some of the scripts that are run by the NIOS IDE won't work (most likely because of the new cygwin1.dll but I'm not sure, maybe it was just my setup) because the scripts have DOS-style '\r\n\' line endings while the programs are expecting unix-style '\n' line endings. That can be fixed with the dos2unix tool. 

 The steps to get it working (as far as I can tell, I might have missed something) are:  

1. Get the installer from (http://www.cygwin.com/setup.exe) and run it. I think the default choices should have everything you need. 
2. Assuming you installed cygwin to c:\cygwin, then you can find cygwin1.dll in c:\cygwin\bin. Make a copy of it and put the copy in C:\altera\72\quartus\bin\cygwin\bin. You may want to make a backup of the old one in case something goes wrong. 
3. Try building a project in the NIOS IDE now. I forget what error it gives, but if you get some other error (not the fork one, that one should be fixed by the new dll file). 
4. Open up a Cygwin Bash shell (A shortcut was created either on your desktop or your start menu or both in the cygwin install depending on what you chose) and type:  cd /cygdrive/c/altera/72/nios2eds/bin dos2unix * That should convert the line endings and fix the second problem. 

  I'm sure this doesn't fix everything, but I was at least able to get a basic project to build properly. Hope this helps.

[Altera_Forum]

i have a program which i try to run using: make SCRS="program.c" run 

 although i ran cygwin.bat and copied the correct cygwin1.dll file, went to the folder you specified and did the unix command, it keeps telling/giving me the following error:  bash: make: command not found  what can i do?

[Altera_Forum]

AH WAIT nvm i got it working, i copied the make.exe from the cygwin folder after downloading it :D works beautifully now thanks so much :D

[Altera_Forum]

Hi there, 

 Has any of you heard about when a Vista compatible version will be released?  Thanks :)

[Altera_Forum]

--- Quote Start ---  Hi there,  Has any of you heard about when a Vista compatible version will be released?  Thanks :)  --- Quote End ---    Quartus 7.2 with SP1 or SP2 is "almost" Vista compatible. In plain 7.2 without Service Packs only the Quartus itself was Vista compatible, not SOPC or NIOS IDE.  With SP1 or SP2 the SOPC and NIOS IDE are now Vista compatible (at least from Altera's marketing point of view). In reality, there are few minor issues (what I've found):  - SOPC uses old Java version, which is not compatible with Vista. This makes Vista's Aero interface to be switched off. Not a problem when running SOPC builder, but when using command line tools, the Aero is switched off/on every couple of seconds thus making other desktop working difficult.  - one command line tool (nios2-bsp-update) requires user to click UAC message box's Allow-button thus stopping the automated build operation.  - GNU compilers in NIOS IDE still occasionally give errors and fail to compile the file (requires restarting the compile).  While waiting version 8.0 (which I've heard should be out around April/May), you might want to try 7.2 with SP2 in Vista to see if it works for you. Altera says it should ... :-)   Jari