Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

6.111 - Introductory Digital Systems Laboratory

Computer Information

You will need to use your Athena account in this subject. If you do not already have an Athena account, get one. If you have problems getting an Athena account, see the lecturer.

In the Digital Laboratory, we have several clusters of computers. Please do NOT use the PCs in the 6.115 area of the Digital Laboratory.

There are two PCs running Windows 98. These machines are NOT networked and run Universal (PAL, PLD, and PROM but NOT Cypress CPLDs) Programmers. One must put files on a floppy and carry the floppy to one of these machines (more on this in a later handout) in order to program devices. No 6.111 software can be run on them except for the programming software.

There are PCs running Athena Linux. All of the these PCs are named pali (i = 1 to 24). Two of these PCs, pcpal2 and pcpal3, support programming of Cypress CPLDs (more on this in a later handout). 6.111 software runs on these EXCEPT the commercial software from Cypress and Altera.

There are Sun Ultra 5 workstations named athpal0i (i = 1 to 5) and eecs-ath-33 (perhaps this last one will be renamed athpal06 sometime). All 6.111 software runs on these machines. Anyone (who has an Athena account) can slogin to one of the Ultra 5s (more on this later).

There are two Sparc 20s named sunpal1 and sunpal2 which run a SunOS which has been modified to be (almost) integrated with Athena. These sunpal workstations are NOT Athena workstations. However, one can use them in a similar manner. A local account and a local directory is automatically created when you respond to the login and password prompt with your Athena login name and password. When logged in to sunpal[12], your home directory will be

/students/<username>

Your Athena locker will appear as

/mit/<username>

and also as

/students/<username>/athena

via a symbolic link.

After you have an Athena account, go to the Digital Laboratory and log in to a sunpal terminal to obtain your sunpal account.

If you have logged in to sunpal[12] and have a local directory, then this home directory can be accessed on all Athena Sun Ultra 5s in the Digital Laboratory as

/students/<username>

The PCs running Athena Linux can run some 6.111 software but not the commercial software we use. To run the commercial software (galaxy, nova, and max2win) it is necessary to login (or slogin) to an Athena Sun workstation. In the Digital Laboratory this can be accomplished by logging in to the console of one of the Ultra 5s or by logging into one of the PCs running Athena Linux (please do NOT use pcpal2 or pcpal3 as these are reserved for programming Cypress CPLDs).

Execute the following:

setup 6.111 (do not use add 6.111 as this does not source /mit/6.111/.attachrc)

ultra5 (this chooses the least used Ultra 5 and does an slogin there).

Then, on the (remote) Ultra 5 do

setup 6.111

Please note that the number of workstations in the lab is limited. As a courtesy to other students do not attempt to reserve a machine by ``locking'' the screen. We are likely to reboot machines we find in this condition.

Printed January 14, 2002