ECE391: Computer Systems Engineering Fall 2021
Tux Emulator Setup Guide
This document contains the instructions to setup Tux Emulator for MP2 Checkpoint 2, in which you will be learning
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to write a device driver for a USB device. Tux Emulator is a software emulator of the physical Tux Controller a
USB game controller with buttons and a LED display used to control the game implemented in MP2.
To start, download the Tux Emulator corresponding to your OS from the course assignment page. Please follow
the steps for your home OS carefully and do not skip any steps. If you have any questions or difficulties in setting up
the emulator, check with a TA in office hours or make a Piazza post. We highly recommend that you set up the Tux
Emulator as early as possible on both your WFH environment and EWS Lab environment. Like for MP1, MP2
demos will also be conducted on the EWS Lab machines through Remote Desktop.
The following steps were tested on Windows 10 machines.
1. Download Tux Emulator for Windows.
2. Run the Tux Emulator executable, Windows might warn you that the app is unrecognized in a pop-up window,
click More Info and then Run anyway, you should see the Tux Emulator window.
3. Right-click on the test machine Desktop shortcut, go to Properties, and add the following line to the end of
Target: -serial tcp:127.0.0.1:4444 and click OK to save.
NOTE: it is possible that your Target line has reach its character limits and you are not able to input the full
tcp address. To solve this, move the ece391 share (not the entire ece391 folder) to a place with a shorter
file location name. Update the Target on all qemu shortcuts to reflect the new file name (theres usually one
place in devel you need to change and two places in test). Reshare your ece391 share folder (IMPORTANT:
make sure the share name is set to ece391 share and not anything else!). If you get an error code of -20 when
mounting your work directory, you reshared your ece391 share folder wrong.
4. IGNORE the serial port setup (Step 3) in the MP2 document, if you have already setup the serial port according
to MP2 document, remove -serial COM# if it exists in the Target line. You should still follow the other steps
in setup instruction in MP2 document.
5. Click OK to save and close the properties window.
6. Start the test machine, if the test machine does not start up, make sure you have setup the serial port exactly as
described in Step 3, and make sure the Tux Emulator is running.
7. If your setup is correct, you should see OOPS displayed on the Tux Emulators LED display after the test
machine has booted.
8. Finally, try running mazegame-demo by sudo ./mazegame-demo in the MP2 folder. The sudo password is
ece391, you should see a timer display on the Tux LED, and you are able to use the Tux Emulator to play the
9. It is possible that the buttons stop responding to user input if you close the demo and restart it the second
time without restarting your test machine, this is a known issue of the demo only, so it should not affect your
development.
Linux (Ubuntu)
These steps are tested on Ubuntu machines, other Linux distros are not tested, but feel free to try.
1. Download Tux Emulator binary for Linux.
2. In the path that the Tux Emulator is downloaded, open a terminal, and run chmod +x ./
3. Execute the binary by either double-clicking it or run it from a terminal.
4. IGNORE the serial port setup (Step 3) in the MP2 document, if you have already setup the serial port according
to MP2 document, remove -serial COM# if you found it exists.
5. Use your favorite text editor to open the test machine shortcut on the Desktop, add -serial tcp:127.0.0.1:4444
(including the quotes) to the end of the second line and save the file.
6. Start the test machine, if the test machine does not start up, make sure you have setup the serial port exactly as
described in Step 5, and make sure the Tux Emulator is running.
7. If your setup is correct, you should see OOPS displayed on the Tux Emulator LED after the test machine has
8. Finally, try running mazegame-demo by sudo ./mazegame-demo in the MP2 folder, the sudo password is
ece391, you should see a timer display on the TUX LED, and you are able to use the TUX Emulator to play
9. It is possible that the buttons stop responding to user input if you close the demo and restart it the second
time without restarting your test machine, this is a known issue of the demo only, so it should not affect your
development.
These steps were tested on MacOS Catalina.
1. Download Tux Emulator for MacOS.
2. Double click on the emulator to run.
a. If the OS says that it cannot verify the developer click Cancel
b. Go to System Preference >Security and Privacy >General.
c. There should be a prompt that asks if you want to open the app anyway.
d. Click on Open Anyway.
e. On the prompt that comes up click Open.
f. You should be able to see the emulator pop up now.
3. IGNORE the serial port setup (Step 3) in the MP2 document, if you have already setup the serial port according
to MP2 document, remove -serial COM#.
4. Drag or open the shortcut for test machine as a text file to your favorite text editor. Add -serial tcp:127.0.0.1:4444
to the end of the second line. Make sure to save the file and close the editor.
5. Start the test machine, if the test machine does not start up, make sure you have setup the serial port exactly as
described in Step 4, and make sure the Tux Emulator is running.
6. If your setup is correct, you should see OOPS displayed on the Tux Emulator LED after the test machine has
7. Finally, try running mazegame-demo by sudo ./mazegame-demo in the MP2 folder, the sudo password is
ece391, you should see a timer display on the TUX LED, and you are able to use the TUX Emulator to play
8. Note that it is possible that the buttons stop responding to user input if you close the demo and restart it the
second time without restarting your test machine, this is a known issue of the demo only, so it should not affect
your development.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank for making the Tux Controller, Huiyuan(Fred) Liu and Kuilin Li for implement-
ing the Tux Emulator, and all ECE 391 staffs who dedicated their time to test and refine the implementation. Should
you have any question related to the emulator, please contact the course staff.
CS: assignmentchef QQ: 1823890830 Email: [email protected]
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