JTAG emulator for MPC8548E (v2)

JTAG emulator for MPC8548E (v2)

[Morrison, Tom]

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What do people recommend for a JTAG emulator for the MPC8548E 

(version 2 silicon).

 

We are not built (or want to) to work with Code Warrior 

environment - thus we can't use the ones that came with 

our CDS.

 

Important (or nice to have) features:

 

  network capable (easy remote debug)

  kgdb compatible (easy kernel remote debug)

  gdb server compatible (for user level remote debug)...

 

Ideas?

 

Thanks in advance.

 

Sincerely,

 

Tom Morrison
Principal Software Engineer

EMPIRIX 
20 Crosby Drive - Bedford, MA  01730
p: 781.266.3567 f: 781.266.3670 
email: tmorrison@empirix.com <mailto:tmorrison@empirix.com>  
www.empirix.com <http://www.empirix.com/> 




 


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Re: JTAG emulator for MPC8548E (v2)

[Grant Likely]

On 1/23/07, Morrison, Tom <tmorrison@empirix.com> wrote:
>
> What do people recommend for a JTAG emulator for the MPC8548E
>
> (version 2 silicon).

Check out the BDI-2000 from Abatron

g.

-- 
Grant Likely, B.Sc. P.Eng.
Secret Lab Technologies Ltd.
grant.likely@secretlab.ca
(403) 399-0195

RE: JTAG emulator for MPC8548E (v2)

[Morrison, Tom]

We actually have one of these - and the H/W engineer is NOT
happy at all. Apparently, it is NOT that stable for single
step operations, and does NOT give a consistent view of the=20
All the internal registers and/or the ability to view all
the registers natively!

I am hoping for one that is more consistent and aware (and stable).

-----Original Message-----
From: glikely@gmail.com [mailto:glikely@gmail.com] On Behalf Of Grant
Likely
Sent: Tuesday, January 23, 2007 12:56 PM
Subject: Re: JTAG emulator for MPC8548E (v2)

On 1/23/07, Morrison, Tom <tmorrison@empirix.com> wrote:
>
> What do people recommend for a JTAG emulator for the MPC8548E
> (version 2 silicon).

Check out the BDI-2000 from Abatron

RE: JTAG emulator for MPC8548E (v2)

[Ben Warren]

On Tue, 2007-01-23 at 13:02 -0500, Morrison, Tom wrote:
> We actually have one of these - and the H/W engineer is NOT
> happy at all. Apparently, it is NOT that stable for single
> step operations, and does NOT give a consistent view of the 
> All the internal registers and/or the ability to view all
> the registers natively!
> 
Not my experience at all, albeit on different PowerPC chips.  Since you
have one, why not try it out yourself and see if it meets YOUR needs?
Unstable single stepping (whatever that means) may not be the fault of
the debugger...

regards,
Ben

Re: JTAG emulator for MPC8548E (v2)

[Michael Galassi]

>On 1/23/07, Morrison, Tom <tmorrison@empirix.com> wrote:
>>
>> What do people recommend for a JTAG emulator for the MPC8548E
>>
>> (version 2 silicon).
>
>Check out the BDI-2000 from Abatron

The BDI has some shortcomings for *my* use (in no particular order):

1) you can't program cplds
2) the ethernet interface is slow
3) the configuration is arcane
4) using the serial port for console use is an iffy proposition at best
5) it is expensive
6) it's configuration relies on having a PC with a serial port

Note that these are shortcomings relative to using a PC with the Xilinx
USB platform cable, and working with ppc405s on Virtex4 FPGAs.  These
may not apply to the MPC8548E, or if they do, the BDI may none-the-less
be your best option.

As an aside, I believe that the term emulator is being used in error in
this context.

-michael

Re: JTAG emulator for MPC8548E (v2)

[Laurent Pinchart]

> We actually have one of these - and the H/W engineer is NOT
> happy at all. Apparently, it is NOT that stable for single
> step operations, and does NOT give a consistent view of the
> All the internal registers and/or the ability to view all
> the registers natively!
>
> I am hoping for one that is more consistent and aware (and stable).

Just to add my 2 cents, I had problems with the BDI-2000 as well. The unit I 
got from Abatron had a hardware problem (the ethernet controller would 
sometimes reset when the BDI initialised the target PPC processor). Their 
French distributor agreed to replace it after making sure it was indeed a 
hardware issue (they seem to assume end-users have a negative IQ and are 
unable to diagnose such a hardware problem themselves).

The new unit works *mostly* fine. No debugging issue (not that I use it that 
much anyway, now that the board boots Linux), but still a flash programming 
issue. Programming the target parallel NOR flash works in slow JTAG mode, but 
not in faster mode using the internal workspace. I reported the problem 
several months ago and still haven't received any solution. It might not be 
Abatron's fault, the French distributor might not have reported the problem 
to them. Abatron people speak German only, and will not respond to e-mails 
written in English (nor will they talk to you on the phone, they just hang 
up).

The BDI-2000 is a nice product, but has a few bugs, is IMHO overprized and has 
one of the worst support service I've had to deal with.

Laurent Pinchart

Re: JTAG emulator for MPC8548E (v2)

[Eugene Surovegin]

On Wed, Jan 24, 2007 at 08:57:19AM +0100, Laurent Pinchart wrote:
> The new unit works *mostly* fine. No debugging issue (not that I use it that 
> much anyway, now that the board boots Linux), but still a flash programming 
> issue. Programming the target parallel NOR flash works in slow JTAG mode, but 
> not in faster mode using the internal workspace. I reported the problem 
> several months ago and still haven't received any solution.

Most likely problem isn't in BDI but in your setup. Depending on 
the particular chip model, to be able use workspace you must have 
initialized memory first. In fact, I'm pretty sure you haven't 
configured chip correctly to make workspace usable. I've been using 
BDI with various PowerPC and MIPS SoCs for many years. It's an excellent 
tool, you just have to use it correctly.

-- 
Eugene

Re: JTAG emulator for MPC8548E (v2)

[Laurent Pinchart]

Hi Eugene,

> > The new unit works *mostly* fine. No debugging issue (not that I use it
> > that much anyway, now that the board boots Linux), but still a flash
> > programming issue. Programming the target parallel NOR flash works in
> > slow JTAG mode, but not in faster mode using the internal workspace. I
> > reported the problem several months ago and still haven't received any
> > solution.
>
> Most likely problem isn't in BDI but in your setup. Depending on
> the particular chip model, to be able use workspace you must have
> initialized memory first. In fact, I'm pretty sure you haven't
> configured chip correctly to make workspace usable. I've been using
> BDI with various PowerPC and MIPS SoCs for many years. It's an excellent
> tool, you just have to use it correctly.

I wish it was that simple. It is probably a target processor configuration 
issue, as I can use the workspace if

a) the target flash has already been programmed with U-Boot
b) the BDI-2000 is misconfigured and fails to stop the target processor at 
startup.

I can thus use the workspace when U-Boot initializes the processor.

I had a look at U-Boot code and tried to initialize the processor registers 
with the same values, without luck. I asked Abatron's French distributor for 
technical support, and they haven't been able to help me. They made me try 
lots of different initialization sequences. Several people online sent me 
their configuration file, and none of them worked for me.

So, there must be a configuration problem somewhere, but even Abatron's 
technical support haven't been able to find it. That's why I complained about 
their support in my e-mail.

Best regards,

Laurent Pinchart

RE: JTAG emulator for MPC8548E (v2)

[Morrison, Tom]

Some of the stability problems have been resolved (it was actually a=20
h/w problem - a debug pin was shorted (setting break points was OK,
but single step caused some issues).

It's the lowest cost one that I've found so far, and in fact, I've had
some positive reviews of one of the distributors in the US (local to
me in the Boston area - I could go over and knock on their door if I=20
really had a problem with it)...

We need at least 2 more - so we might just have to go this route and
work a little harder at getting the debug environment right.

Thanks for everyone's input!

Tom Morrison

-----Original Message-----
<snip all responses good/bad about the BDI-2000 for brevity sake!>

Re: JTAG emulator for MPC8548E (v2)

[Eugene Surovegin]

On Wed, Jan 24, 2007 at 12:06:17PM +0100, Laurent Pinchart wrote:
> Hi Eugene,
> 
> > > The new unit works *mostly* fine. No debugging issue (not that I use it
> > > that much anyway, now that the board boots Linux), but still a flash
> > > programming issue. Programming the target parallel NOR flash works in
> > > slow JTAG mode, but not in faster mode using the internal workspace. I
> > > reported the problem several months ago and still haven't received any
> > > solution.
> >
> > Most likely problem isn't in BDI but in your setup. Depending on
> > the particular chip model, to be able use workspace you must have
> > initialized memory first. In fact, I'm pretty sure you haven't
> > configured chip correctly to make workspace usable. I've been using
> > BDI with various PowerPC and MIPS SoCs for many years. It's an excellent
> > tool, you just have to use it correctly.
> 
> I wish it was that simple.

Sorry, but it is. It's a low level tool which requires deep knowledge 
of the chip.

>  It is probably a target processor configuration 
> issue, as I can use the workspace if
> 
> a) the target flash has already been programmed with U-Boot
> b) the BDI-2000 is misconfigured and fails to stop the target processor at 
> startup.
> 
> I can thus use the workspace when U-Boot initializes the processor.

Wow, so you knew it wasn't BDI but a configuration problem from the 
start. So it all was just a FUD, how low.  

> 
> I had a look at U-Boot code and tried to initialize the processor registers 
> with the same values, without luck. I asked Abatron's French distributor for 
> technical support, and they haven't been able to help me. They made me try 
> lots of different initialization sequences. Several people online sent me 
> their configuration file, and none of them worked for me.
> 
> So, there must be a configuration problem somewhere, but even Abatron's 
> technical support haven't been able to find it. That's why I complained about 
> their support in my e-mail.

In your original e-mail you made it look like BDI has a bug in it, 
which in fact isn't true. Bad support might be a concern, I agree, but 
this doesn't make a tool bad, IMHO.

-- 
Eugene

Re: JTAG emulator for MPC8548E (v2)

[Mark A. Greer]

On Wed, Jan 24, 2007 at 09:19:17AM -0800, Eugene Surovegin wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 24, 2007 at 12:06:17PM +0100, Laurent Pinchart wrote:

<snip>

> > I had a look at U-Boot code and tried to initialize the processor registers 
> > with the same values, without luck. I asked Abatron's French distributor for 
> > technical support, and they haven't been able to help me. They made me try 
> > lots of different initialization sequences. Several people online sent me 
> > their configuration file, and none of them worked for me.
> > 
> > So, there must be a configuration problem somewhere, but even Abatron's 
> > technical support haven't been able to find it. That's why I complained about 
> > their support in my e-mail.
> 
> In your original e-mail you made it look like BDI has a bug in it, 
> which in fact isn't true. Bad support might be a concern, I agree, but 
> this doesn't make a tool bad, IMHO.

FWIW, I've had top-notch support from Abatron.  Also, back when my
company bought a bunch of BDI's they were around half the price of the
nearest competitor and less cumbersome to use.  Maybe there are cheaper
alternatives now, I don't know.  Obviously, YMMV.

And no, I don't get a kickback from them... :)

Mark

Re: JTAG emulator for MPC8548E (v2)

[Bill Gatliff]

Guys:

Mark A. Greer wrote:

>FWIW, I've had top-notch support from Abatron.  Also, back when my
>company bought a bunch of BDI's they were around half the price of the
>nearest competitor and less cumbersome to use.  Maybe there are cheaper
>alternatives now, I don't know.  Obviously, YMMV.
>  
>


I've had excellent support from Abatron as well.  I've owned one of 
their units for several years, bought it with my own money (which says a 
lot, since I'm a freelancer!).  And I've brought a few obscure issues to 
them over the years, all of which were addressed to my satisfaction.  
The BDI2000 has been solid, significantly easier to setup and more 
reliable in use than several other systems I've tried.

One thing to keep in mind is that they're really constrained by not 
having intimate knowledge of _your_ platform.  If your memory bus 
configuration is wrong, for example, there isn't a whole lot that they 
can do to rule that out from their end since they don't have your hardware.

JTAG in general gets easily tripped up with power problems, etc. that 
are a natural part of untested circuits.  If this stuff was easy, we'd 
have to find work elsewhere!


>And no, I don't get a kickback from them... :)
>  
>

Me neither.  But if someone from Abatron has an unused unit sitting 
around, I sure could use one!  :)


b.g.

-- 
Bill Gatliff
bgat@billgatliff.com

Re: JTAG emulator for MPC8548E (v2)

[Wolfgang Denk]

In message <200701240857.19428.laurent.pinchart@technotrade.biz> you wrote:
>
> The new unit works *mostly* fine. No debugging issue (not that I use it that 
> much anyway, now that the board boots Linux), but still a flash programming 
> issue. Programming the target parallel NOR flash works in slow JTAG mode, but 
> not in faster mode using the internal workspace. I reported the problem 

This may as well be a misconfiguration in your config file, like
setting wrong flash timings.

> several months ago and still haven't received any solution. It might not be 
> Abatron's fault, the French distributor might not have reported the problem 
> to them. Abatron people speak German only, and will not respond to e-mails 
> written in English (nor will they talk to you on the phone, they just hang 
> up).

I cannot confirm this. On contrary. Abatron's support is one  of  the
best  I've  ever  seen,  and I have seen a few. And of course you can
send messages in  English  to  support@abatron.ch,  and  you  do  get
replies.  And  they  do  answer  the phone (in German and in English,
too).

> The BDI-2000 is a nice product, but has a few bugs, is IMHO overprized and has 
> one of the worst support service I've had to deal with.

Hm... we have about 15 such devices in daily use. I don't doubt  your
report, but you must have had really bad luck. This is NOT the normal
situation with Abatron or the BDI.

Best regards,

Wolfgang Denk

-- 
Software Engineering:  Embedded and Realtime Systems,  Embedded Linux
Phone: (+49)-8142-66989-10 Fax: (+49)-8142-66989-80 Email: wd@denx.de
In Nature there are neither rewards nor punishments, there are conse-
quences.                                            -- R.G. Ingersoll

Re: JTAG emulator for MPC8548E (v2)

[Frank]

--- Eugene Surovegin <ebs@ebshome.net> wrote:

> On Wed, Jan 24, 2007 at 08:57:19AM +0100, Laurent Pinchart
> wrote:
> > The new unit works *mostly* fine. No debugging issue (not
> that I use it that 
> > much anyway, now that the board boots Linux), but still a
> flash programming 
> > issue. Programming the target parallel NOR flash works in
> slow JTAG mode, but 
> > not in faster mode using the internal workspace. I reported
> the problem 
> > several months ago and still haven't received any solution.
> 
> Most likely problem isn't in BDI but in your setup. Depending
> on 
> the particular chip model, to be able use workspace you must
> have 
> initialized memory first. In fact, I'm pretty sure you haven't
> 
> configured chip correctly to make workspace usable. I've been
> using 
> BDI with various PowerPC and MIPS SoCs for many years. It's an
> excellent 
> tool, you just have to use it correctly.
> 
> -- 
> Eugene
> 
I totally agree. I have also been using the BDI 2000 for several
years on PPC,ARM,MIPS and Xscale and have never had a problem.


 
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Re: JTAG emulator for MPC8548E (v2)

[Laurent Pinchart]

Hi Wolfgang,

> > The new unit works *mostly* fine. No debugging issue (not that I use it
> > that much anyway, now that the board boots Linux), but still a flash
> > programming issue. Programming the target parallel NOR flash works in
> > slow JTAG mode, but not in faster mode using the internal workspace. I
> > reported the problem
>
> This may as well be a misconfiguration in your config file, like
> setting wrong flash timings.

I agree with you there, but I haven't been able to find which setting I got 
wrong. I dumped the registers contents after the board gets initialised by 
U-Boot, and all related values are identical. I even traced the U-Boot code 
and tried to reproduce the exact initialisation sequence, without luck.

This is definitely an initialisation issue, as programming in workspace mode 
works when the board gets initialised by U-Boot first (wrong reset vector 
setting in the config file, which makes the BDI freeze the processor after it 
started up).

> > several months ago and still haven't received any solution. It might not
> > be Abatron's fault, the French distributor might not have reported the
> > problem to them. Abatron people speak German only, and will not respond
> > to e-mails written in English (nor will they talk to you on the phone,
> > they just hang up).
>
> I cannot confirm this. On contrary. Abatron's support is one  of  the
> best  I've  ever  seen,  and I have seen a few. And of course you can
> send messages in  English  to  support@abatron.ch,  and  you  do  get
> replies.  And  they  do  answer  the phone (in German and in English,
> too).

I might have been unlucky, but the person who picked the phone definitely hung 
up on us when he/she realized we were speaking English.

> > The BDI-2000 is a nice product, but has a few bugs, is IMHO overprized
> > and has one of the worst support service I've had to deal with.
>
> Hm... we have about 15 such devices in daily use. I don't doubt  your
> report, but you must have had really bad luck. This is NOT the normal
> situation with Abatron or the BDI.

Glad to hear :-) I will try again then. Thanks.

Best regards,

Laurent Pinchart

Re: JTAG emulator for MPC8548E (v2)

[Laurent Pinchart]

Hi Eugene,

> > > > The new unit works *mostly* fine. No debugging issue (not that I use
> > > > it that much anyway, now that the board boots Linux), but still a
> > > > flash programming issue. Programming the target parallel NOR flash
> > > > works in slow JTAG mode, but not in faster mode using the internal
> > > > workspace. I reported the problem several months ago and still
> > > > haven't received any solution.
> > >
> > > Most likely problem isn't in BDI but in your setup. Depending on
> > > the particular chip model, to be able use workspace you must have
> > > initialized memory first. In fact, I'm pretty sure you haven't
> > > configured chip correctly to make workspace usable. I've been using
> > > BDI with various PowerPC and MIPS SoCs for many years. It's an
> > > excellent tool, you just have to use it correctly.
> >
> > I wish it was that simple.
>
> Sorry, but it is. It's a low level tool which requires deep knowledge
> of the chip.
>
> >  It is probably a target processor configuration
> > issue, as I can use the workspace if
> >
> > a) the target flash has already been programmed with U-Boot
> > b) the BDI-2000 is misconfigured and fails to stop the target processor
> > at startup.
> >
> > I can thus use the workspace when U-Boot initializes the processor.
>
> Wow, so you knew it wasn't BDI but a configuration problem from the
> start. So it all was just a FUD, how low.

I don't agree with you there. It is a configuration issue related to the BDI. 
For all I know, it could be a bug in the BDI that only occurs when 
initialising given registers in a given sequence. Or it might be an issue 
with the BDI-2000 unit I got, which might have a hardware problem. I blamed 
my configuration file first, but even the tech support people haven't been 
able to locate the issue.

All I know is that U-Boot is able to initialise the processor correctly, but 
the BDI isn't, even when fed with a configuration file that performs the same 
initialisation sequence as U-Boot. There are two possible causes : either I 
got the configuration file wrong and forgot a setting, or the BDI fails to 
perform one of the steps correctly.

> > I had a look at U-Boot code and tried to initialize the processor
> > registers with the same values, without luck. I asked Abatron's French
> > distributor for technical support, and they haven't been able to help me.
> > They made me try lots of different initialization sequences. Several
> > people online sent me their configuration file, and none of them worked
> > for me.
> >
> > So, there must be a configuration problem somewhere, but even Abatron's
> > technical support haven't been able to find it. That's why I complained
> > about their support in my e-mail.
>
> In your original e-mail you made it look like BDI has a bug in it,
> which in fact isn't true. Bad support might be a concern, I agree, but
> this doesn't make a tool bad, IMHO.

I don't know where the bug is, unfortunately. As I stated, the BDI-2000 is a 
nice tool, which helped me a lot. I just wish I hadn't suffered such a bad 
technical support experience. That's probably the French distributor's fault, 
and it seems I have been very unlucky when contacting Abatron directly.

Laurent Pinchart

Re: JTAG emulator for MPC8548E (v2)

[Ramirez-Ortiz, Jorge]

Hi=20
We are currently using two BDI-2000s to debug 2.6.18 kernels on the =
ppc8545 rev(2) devices with no problems reported so far (apart from a =
minor patch required in the kernel to set up breakpoints).
I just thought I'd let you people know.
Jorge

Re: JTAG emulator for MPC8548E (v2)

[Dan Malek]

On Jan 25, 2007, at 1:56 PM, Ramirez-Ortiz, Jorge wrote:

> We are currently using two BDI-2000s to debug 2.6.18 kernels on the  
> ppc8545 rev(2) devices with no problems reported so far (apart from  
> a minor patch required in the kernel to set up breakpoints).

I'm working on a proper patch to add all of this
formally to the sources.  It's been irritating me for
a long time, so I'm reworking some of these jtag
debugger options.  Unfortunately, it touches more
than just 85xx to get it right.

Thanks.

	-- Dan