Tools
PCSpim
Spim is a MIPS 2000 simulator, developed by James Larus.
For the labs in this course, we use the PC version of Spim, called PCSpim. PCSpim
has been installed on the PC's in the computer lab in Pearson 108. It can be run
from those machines by selecting
PCSpim from the 'Start Menu' -> 'Programs' menu. However, some machines have an old version
of PCSpim installed. To determine if the correct version is installed, start PCSpim and select
the menu item 'Help' -> 'About PCSpim...'. The top line of the dialog that appears should read
'PCSpim Version 7.2.1' as shown in the image below:
For machines with an incorrect version of PCSpim, or your own home machines, you can run PCSpim
by downloading the zip file here:
PCSpim7.zip
Unzip that zip file and run PCSpim by double-clicking on pcspim.exe in the folder that was created.
The first time you run it, you will be presented with the following dialog:
Select 'Yes' and then in the 'Settings' dialog that appears, use the 'Browse' button to navigate
to and select the 'exceptions.s' file that is in the same folder as pcspim.exe which you just
unzipped. You should only have to manually select the exceptions file the first time you run
pcspim on a machine.
You can find more information on Spim here (However, you should only use the
version that can be downloaded above due to problems with backwards compatibility
in older versions):
http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~larus/spim.html