Suggestions for a PPC440 board?

Suggestions for a PPC440 board?

[David Hawkins]

Hi all,

I'm evaluating the Yosemite 440EP board at the moment,
with the intention of using it on custom compactPCI
boards. I've got a few questions to ask the group, but
I'll leave those for another email.

In the final system, the cPCI host will be an x86 CPU
(since I already have them), and the cPCI peripherals
will be the 440EP custom boards --- so my intended
target for the 440EP is as a peripheral, whereas the
Yosemite is a host-only development platform (but,
still I have a lot to learn, so its a good place to
start).

To help with the development of PCI drivers, I was thinking
of getting a pre-existing 440-based cPCI board. I haven't
found any 440EP boards, but there are a few 440GP and
440GX boards out there. I need the 440EP FPU in the
real system, but for driver development, one of these
machines would do.

So I have located a few boards, mostly designed as
PMC carrier baseboards. Has anyone used these?

Actis computer       CSBC-6440        440GP
Momentum Computer    Civet-C          440GP
Extreme Engineering  XChange1100/2/4  440GX

Since these boards are designed as carrier boards,
they all use a 21555 transparent/or non-transparent
PCI-to-PCI bridge. I was planning to connect the
440EP directly to the cPCI bus (or at least via
3.3V/5V buffers), so the driver designed against one
of these carrier boards would not quite be identical
(since the host would talk to the 21555 bridge,
not the 440 bridge). So, I might not follow this
route. Alternatively, I could use a PMC, or PrPMC
board, and develop the drivers that way, eg.

Extreme Engineering    Xpedite1000/1  440GX
Artisyn Technologies   PmPPC          440GP

So - anyone have a favorite?

Cheers
Dave Hawkins
Caltech.

Re: Suggestions for a PPC440 board?

[Travis B. Sawyer]

David Hawkins wrote:

>Hi all,
>
>I'm evaluating the Yosemite 440EP board at the moment,
>with the intention of using it on custom compactPCI
>boards. I've got a few questions to ask the group, but
>I'll leave those for another email.
>  
>
<Snip>

>So, I might not follow this
>route. Alternatively, I could use a PMC, or PrPMC
>board, and develop the drivers that way, eg.
>
>Extreme Engineering    Xpedite1000/1  440GX
>Artisyn Technologies   PmPPC          440GP
>
>So - anyone have a favorite?
>  
>
David:

I've already done the Das u-boot port for the Xpedite1k, and its released.

If that makes it any easier for you to decided.

Granted the port was done for monarch mode, not non-monarch, but it 
should be simple
enough to change that.

-travis

Re: Suggestions for a PPC440 board?

[David Hawkins]

> I've already done the Das u-boot port for the Xpedite1k, and its released.
> 
> If that makes it any easier for you to decided.
> 
> Granted the port was done for monarch mode, not non-monarch, but it 
> should be simple
> enough to change that.

Hey Travis,

Yeah, that'll definitely help. Do you recall how much you paid for
the board? I'll get a quote.

Dave

Artesyn PM/PPC 750 U-Boot/Linux support? Datasheet?

[David Hawkins]

Hi all,

I was searching around eBay last night to see what old
PowerPC based equipment I could buy for development work.

There is a used-equipment seller with a 125 Artesyn
PM/PPC-750 units for sale at $50 ea. It looks like this
is an end-of-life part for Artesyn, since the data
sheet is no longer on their web (they have only the
newer parts).

The PowerPC appears to be a 603e-type processor, whereas
I'm really more interested in the 440 Book E, and so
the Artesyn PM/PPC-440 is probably what I should look
at (or the Xpedite1k since Travis said he's ported it
to U-Boot).

But hey, if anyone else is looking for toys ...
also if anyone has the datasheet for this board, and
can confirm that I could put U-Boot and Linux on
it, I'd seriously consider offering $50 for a couple.

The eBay search was for cPCI, the company selling
the parts is OSTI sales direct.

Cheers
Dave

Re: Artesyn PM/PPC 750 U-Boot/Linux support? Datasheet?

[David Hawkins]

> also if anyone has the datasheet for this board

Artesyn just sent me the PDF, so if anyone needs it,
feel free to ask.

Dave

Artesyn Processor PMC 'Host Bridge' has no IRQ assigned?

[David Hawkins]

Hi all,

I mentioned a few weeks back that I had found some
Artesyn PrPMC boards on eBay for about $50 ea.
I purchased a couple of the boards, I have booted
one on a PMC site on a x86 compact PCI host CPU board.

 From the x86 host, if I perform lspci on the
board, its recognized as a 'Host Bridge';

# lspci -s 02:03.0 -vv
02:03.0 Host bridge: Artesyn Communication Products PM/PPC (rev 01)
         Subsystem: Unknown device 00f9:1014
         Control: I/O- Mem+ BusMaster- SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- 
ParErr- Stepping- SERR+ FastB2B-
         Status: Cap- 66Mhz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=medium 
 >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR-
         Region 1: Memory at f4000000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=64M]
         Region 2: Memory at f0700000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=4K]

What appears strange to me is that there is no IRQ assigned.
How then would one write a driver on the PMC board that
could interrupt the x86 Host CPU??

I haven't used PrPMC boards before, so perhaps this
is normal.

Travis, you mentioned you'd used this board before. Do you
recall if this 'feature' is configurable, i.e., can I enable
an interrupt. I'll also take a look in the IBM CPC700 bridge
data sheet and see if I can see anything in there.

I checked the mode of the PMC board using the monitor program.
It says its in non-Monarch mode, so it is correctly configuring
itself as a PCI peripheral.

My objective for the board is to put U-Boot on it (Travis mentioned
the Artesyn board is supported), boot Linux, and then write
drivers for communicating over PCI to an x86 host (much as
I plan to do with the 440EP processor).

Anyway, comments welcome!

Dave

Re: Artesyn Processor PMC 'Host Bridge' has no IRQ assigned?

[Travis B. Sawyer]

David Hawkins wrote:

> What appears strange to me is that there is no IRQ assigned.
>
Ouch.

> I haven't used PrPMC boards before, so perhaps this
> is normal.
>
> Travis, you mentioned you'd used this board before. Do you
> recall if this 'feature' is configurable, i.e., can I enable
> an interrupt. I'll also take a look in the IBM CPC700 bridge
> data sheet and see if I can see anything in there.
>
It's been a couple of years since I've had to mess with the ArtPrPMC board.
There is, IIRC, there is a doorbell register in the CPC700, but I don't 
have the spec
handy.  My last use of the prpmc was with vxworks and shared memory 
messaging
using a doorbell.

> I checked the mode of the PMC board using the monitor program.
> It says its in non-Monarch mode, so it is correctly configuring
> itself as a PCI peripheral.
>
> My objective for the board is to put U-Boot on it (Travis mentioned
> the Artesyn board is supported), boot Linux, and then write
> drivers for communicating over PCI to an x86 host (much as
> I plan to do with the 440EP processor).
>
Umm... I recall stating the XPEDITE1000 from X-ES was supported by u-boot
(I'll have to submit another patch to Wolfgang as they(XES) changed some 
stuff wrt
flash write protect, I've also moved the env from the cramped i2c eeprom 
(bad) to
the intel flash).

I'd have to check the u-boot source for PrPMC support, as I haven't run 
u-boot on it.

Best Regards, and good luck!
-travis

Re: Artesyn Processor PMC 'Host Bridge' has no IRQ assigned?

[David Hawkins]

Hi Travis,

> It's been a couple of years since I've had to mess with the
> ArtPrPMC board. There is, IIRC, there is a doorbell register
> in the CPC700, but I don't have the spec handy.  My last
> use of the prpmc was with vxworks and shared memory 
> messaging using a doorbell.

Yeah, thats pretty much the 'way of PCI', so I was surprized
not to see the IRQ line assigned from the x86 host-side.

> Umm... I recall stating the XPEDITE1000 from X-ES was
> supported by u-boot (I'll have to submit another patch to
> Wolfgang as they(XES) changed some stuff wrt flash write
> protect, I've also moved the env from the cramped i2c eeprom 
> (bad) to the intel flash).

Oh, perhaps the comment was that you had used the board then :)

> I'd have to check the u-boot source for PrPMC support, as I
> haven't run u-boot on it.

No sweat, if I want to put U-Boot on it, then I'll just have to
port it :)  Since the Artesyn bootloader can tftp etc, I'll
figure out first how to get Linux booted.

I just booted up the second board, and it did not get
an IRQ either. I'll dig into the CPC700 manual, its likely
a boot-time enable.

Thanks for the feedback!
Dave