Tools

Tools

Several tools have been developed in order to simplify the development process. These tools are written in C# using Microsoft Visual Studio. More cross platform friendly code may be developed in the future. For now no other versions exists.

WARNING: All the tools in the tools directory are currently not written for user-friendliness. Wrong user input may results in crashes of the program, or produce wrong results without any warnings.

Tools for synthesis and simulation

The OpenSOC86 project is designed with the Altera Quartus and Modelsim software. When using other tools one may have to make some changes to specific files. The OpenSOC86 project is targeted for the Cyclone II FPGA. This FPGA is only supported with Quartus versions up to version 13.0 SP1. Both the free Quartus web edition and the free Altera-Modelsim edition can be used to compile and simulate this project.

Tools for compiling the bios

All tools for compiling the bios are included in the bios/pcxtbios25/tools directory. These tools are 16-bit applications and thus will not run on a modern Windows system. For both Windows and Linux one can use DOSBox to run these tools.

Tools for compiling the test files

The test files are originally written for compilation with the GNU assembler in Linux. The tools shown in the table below need to be installed. On Windows one can use these tools with cygwin.

Tool	Package	Description
make	make	The GNU version of the 'make' utility
as	binutils	The GNU assembler
objcopy	binutils	Copys and translates object files
od	coreutils	Dump files in octal and other formats