CSCI 2321 (Principles of Computer Design), Spring 2004:
Notes on Puck

Introduction

Puck on the department's network is an SGI machine that implements the MIPS architecture. You should be able to connect to this machine in whatever way you use to connect to our Linux machines (ssh from another Unix/Linux system, putty from Windows). At that point you should be ``in'' your home directory on Sol and can use more or less the same commands you would use on one of the Linux machines. I say ``more or less'' because currently Puck is running IRIX, which is SGI's version of Unix and similar to Linux but not identical. (For example, there appears to be no less command -- but you can use more -- and vi is ``real'' vi rather than vim. If this becomes frustrating, remember that you have access to your Sol home directory from many machines, so editing and viewing files doesn't have to be done on Puck.)

Things to try

• Compile C code into MIPS assembly language: gcc -S myfile.c produces myfile.s containing MIPS assembly.

• Compile C to object code and/or an executable: gcc -c myfile.c produces object file myfile.o; gcc -o myfile myfile.c produces executable myfile. Look at the object code or executable with od. (Probably you will want to pipe the output to more or redirect it to a file you can look at from another system.)

• More to be added later.