Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Fall Semester, 2007
6.01: Introduction to EECS I

Installing the 6.01 software on Windows

A. Download the software

Download the following files to your desktop:

B. Install the Python language

    Double click on the Python installer (python-2.5.1.msi) to begin the Python installation process.

  1. In reply to the options: install the software for all users, use the default directory (C:\Python25\) and in general just click "next" to accept the defaults.

  2. Wait for the installation to finish and click "finish". Note that installing Python will also automatically install IDLE.

C. Check that Python works

  1. Find Python 2.5 in your menu of programs and run "Python (command line)". This should produce a window that says "Python 2.5.1 ..." and ends with a prompt (>>>)

  2. At the prompt, type
    >>> 2**10
    and press Enter. The result should be 210, or 1024. Try computing 21000 and verify that this works as well.

  3. If this works, you've (probably) successfully installed Python. Close the Python window. Ask for help if something has gone wrong.

D. Install additional python packages

Double-click on the numpy installer on your desktop (numpy-1.0.3.1.win32-py2.5.exe). Accept the defaults (i.e., just click "next"), wait for the installation to complete, and click "finish".

Double-click on the pywin32 installer on your desktop (pywin32-210.win32-py2.5.exe). Accept the defaults (i.e., just click "next"), wait for the installation to complete, and click "finish".

E. Install the SoaR software

Double-click on the SoaR installer on your desktop (SoaR-2.0.121.win32.exe). Accept the defaults (i.e., just click "next"), wait for the installation to complete, and click "finish".

F. Try it!

To start SoaR, simply run SoaR from Start->Programs.

You can now remove the other three files that you downloaded to your desktop.

If you just want to write Python scripts, without needing to use SoaR, you can open up IDLE directly. Go to Start | All Programs | Python 2.5 | IDLE (Python GUI). This will bring up the IDLE editor that you use during lab.