We have a custom version of the spim simulator which has been extended to do file open/read/write/close. This extension is only available in the PC version of spim. This extended version is intended ONLY for use in CSE and is not supported by anyone for any other use.
Download SPIM63a.zip by clicking on the link, and either select "Open from location" or save it to disk and unzip it by double-clicking. No further installation is needed.
The official spim page has the original version of the program and other useful information.
The best source of documentation is said to be Appendix A of your book, however, it is a bit general. This PDF describes the windows implementation of spim to some degree.
If you have any trouble getting spim or installing it, please do not hestitate to send Dustin mail (dbarnes@cs).
The source files that spim reads in are just text, but must have a .s file name extension to be recognized. This means that Notepad and Word are awkward to use, as they insist upon adding .txt to the end of text file names.
ConTEXT is a simple text editor that supports syntax highlighting (like Visual Studio), and is small, fast and fairly easy to use. You can download version 0.93.3 here. To get syntax highlighting for MIPS assembly code, download MIPSAssembler.chl and put it in the Highlighters directory after you install ConTEXT.
Again, if you have any trouble, please send Dustin mail (dbarnes@cs).