Last update: May 22, 2003

This document is intended to assist ECE Students taking ECE-331, Digital Design, ECE-332, Digital Design Lab, ECE-445, Computer Organization, and ECE-545, Introduction to VHDL, in setting up their computing environment for using Mentor Graphics tools on cpe02.gmu.edu. It also has pointers on how to get started with the Mentor Graphics tutorial.

The Mentor Graphics software is designed to operate in an X-terminal environment on unix workstations.  MGC is currently installed on cpe02.gmu.edu.

This means that MGC software  can be accessed from the X-terminals in Room 133 of S&T-II as well as from other on/off-campus X-terminals (e.g., Linux ssh) or under MS-Windows using the X-windows emulator  Cygnus XFree86.  All MS-Windows machines available in the ECE Departmental Labs located in S&T II, rooms 203 and 265, as well as S&T I, rooms 2A and 2B have this X-terminal emulator installed on them. To start this terminal and connect to cpe02 simply click on the cpe02 icon visible on the desktop in the top-left corner of the screen.  Please, keep in mind that an off-campus access over a dial-up connection is less than satisfactory in either environment, although suitable performance may be possible through a DSL or Cable-Modem connection.