APPENDIX A — Downloading and Installing SPIM

This on-line text uses SPIM. SPIM is a simulator for the MIPS R2000/R3000 processor instruction set architecture (ISA). All you need for this course is SPIM and a text editor. Notepad will work, just barely. A better text editor is much more convenient. If you are already using a text editor that came with a programming environment it will work fine. However, the editor that comes with Visual Basic will not work, and a "word processor" such as WordPerfect or Word will not work.

For a text editor I recommend CodeGenie. It is free, works well with many programming languages, and is an easy download:

SPIM is in the public domain, available for free download at:

http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~larus/spim.html

If you are familiar with downloading and installing programs go directly to that site and skip the rest of this appendix. If (as happens all too often) SPIM has moved to a new location, look for it with a search engine. It is used by many schools and is downloadable from several locations.

Chapter Topics:

• Downloading SPIM.
• Installing SPIM.
• Testing SPIM.
• Usage Notes.
• Additional Resources.