IRSIM-9.7 for Windows XP (and maybe others?)

IRSIM-Cygwin compile and install:

Requirements: Windows, plenty of disk space. Nothing unusual. High bandwidth internet connection is definitely a plus.

Step 1: Install Cygwin and the Tcl and X11-based Tk Cygwin binary distribution

It is absolutely necessary that at least a base version of Cygwin be installed, as well as the precompiled distribution of X11-based Tcl/Tk, according to the instructions in the title link.

Step 2, Option 1: IRSIM Quick Install

This is the easiest way to get IRSIM running, but may be significantly out of date from the latest version, depending on when I last compiled IRSIM on a Windows machine.
  1. Download (use your browser and download to the root directory of the Cygwin distribution, which by default is C:\cygwin:
    File Revision Size Date
    irsim-9.7.64v.tgz 9.7.64 (vista) (456KB) January 22, 2008
    irsim-9.7.47.tgz 9.7.47 (459KB) April 7, 2007
    irsim-9.7.35.tgz 9.7.35 (457KB) November 13, 2006
    irsim9_7_26.tgz 9.7.26 (453KB) September 19, 2006
    irsim_win.tgz 9.7.10 (404KB) October 18, 2005
  2. Bring up a Cygwin terminal on the Windows desktop.
  3. Type cd /
  4. This is where the file irsim9_7_26.tgz should be.
  5. Type tar xfz irsim9_7_26.tgz
  6. Run by typing irsim. This should be all you need to do! In case the executable can't be found, it may be necessary to type the full path, which is /usr/local/bin/irsim.
  7. Note that irsim normally doesn't do anything if you don't have a netlist to simulate. If you have installed magic, you can test irsim on a working netlist by typing
    irsim scmos100 /usr/local/lib/magic/tutorial/tut11a.sim.

Step 2, Option 2: IRSIM Compile and Install from Source

Since I don't update the Cygwin distribution very often, it can get rather outdated compared to the latest source distribution of IRSIM. However, if you follow the Cygwin and Tcl/Tk for X11 installation instructions, you should have everything you need to compile IRSIM from source.
  1. I suggest creating a directory /usr/local/src with the command "mkdir /usr/local/src", then doing "cd /usr/local/src" before proceeding with the next item. However, the magic source may be downloaded into the default top directory without any problem.
  2. Use your web browser to download the latest IRSIM source distribution. If default values are chosen during install, then the Cygwin top-level directory is rooted at "C:\cygwin", and the directory above is "C:\cygwin\usr\local\src" as viewed in the Windows environment.
  3. Download the latest .tgz file from the IRSIM web page.
  4. Once the .tgz file is in the proper destination, you should be able to see the file from the Cygwin terminal prompt by typing the command "ls".
  5. At the Cygwin terminal prompt, type "tar xfz irsim-9.7.10.tgz" (of course, substitute the filename for the actual version and revision number of the IRSIM source).
  6. Type "cd irsim-9.7.10" (likewise, substitute the correct name).
  7. Type "./configure".
  8. Follow up with "make". Hopefully this runs without errors (although there are a handful of warnings, these may be ignored).
  9. Final step is "make install".
  10. You can test by typing "irsim" at the Cygwin terminal prompt.
  11. Note that there is an executable of IRSIM called "/usr/local/bin/irsimexec.exe", and may be launched from a batch file, and thereby launched directly from the Windows desktop. This is left as an exercise unless someone wants to send me a working batch file.

Last updated: January 22, 2008 at 3:58pm