[ECOS] Transceiver required for SMC2 on MPC821?

[ECOS] Transceiver required for SMC2 on MPC821?

[Jamie Guinan]

Hi all,

I'm trying to get output from the SMC2 port on my
MBX board (MPC821).

Is it necessary to put a transceiver between the SMC2
pins and the serial cable if you want to talk to an
RS-232 port at the other end?  The SMC2 Tx/Rx, and GND
pins are available at header J1, but I had no
luck wiring them up to a serial port.  Maybe the
821 can't drive the RS-232 voltages?

(This not eCos-specific, but I'm using eCos and there
 seem to be other MBX users around here so I figured
 I'd ask anyway.)

-Jamie

p.s.  Hugo helped get the SMC2 configuration working 
a few weeks ago - that much appears to be working.
Thanks, H.

Re: [ECOS] Transceiver required for SMC2 on MPC821?

[Morgan Jones]

Hi,

That's right - the 821 MBX boards have a RS232 transceiver on SMC1, but
not on SMC2. The pins you're talking about come right off the processor
and are 3.3V CMOS level signals.

Morgan


Jamie Guinan wrote:
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> I'm trying to get output from the SMC2 port on my
> MBX board (MPC821).
> 
> Is it necessary to put a transceiver between the SMC2
> pins and the serial cable if you want to talk to an
> RS-232 port at the other end?  The SMC2 Tx/Rx, and GND
> pins are available at header J1, but I had no
> luck wiring them up to a serial port.  Maybe the
> 821 can't drive the RS-232 voltages?
> 
> (This not eCos-specific, but I'm using eCos and there
>  seem to be other MBX users around here so I figured
>  I'd ask anyway.)
> 
> -Jamie
> 
> p.s.  Hugo helped get the SMC2 configuration working
> a few weeks ago - that much appears to be working.
> Thanks, H.

[ECOS] Re: Transceiver required for SMC2 on MPC821?

[Jamie Guinan]

Thanks to all (on and off the list) for helping out with
my SMC2 issues.  I wired up a little riser card with a 
MAX232 transceiver and the required 1uF caps, and 
from the hardware side it looks good now.  I can redirect 
the EPPCBug console to SMC2 with "ta 1", that works fine, 
and the Tx/RX leds on my inline RS-232 tester are a nice 
healthy green instead of a dim red.

Now for an eCos-related question: is anyone successfully 
using SMC2 on an MBX using the "/dev/ser2" interface?

I've had mixed results.

a) With the following, all the cyg_io_* calls work fine, but
nothing comes out SMC2.  I stepped into serial_write()
a little, and it seemed to be calling HAL_DIAG_WRITE_CHAR()
which seemed a bit odd.

pkgconf/infra.h:     #define  CYGDBG_INFRA_DIAG_USE_DEVICE
pkgconf/io_serial.h: #define CYGPKG_IO_SERIAL_POWERPC_QUICC_SMC
pkgconf/io_serial.h: #define  CYGPKG_IO_SERIAL_POWERPC_QUICC_SMC_SMC1
pkgconf/io_serial.h: #define  CYGPKG_IO_SERIAL_POWERPC_QUICC_SMC_SMC2


b) With these settings, I got one string out SMC2 before the
assertion at hal_inter.c:212 tripped with "Interrupt not handled".

pkgconf/infra.h:     #undef  CYGDBG_INFRA_DIAG_USE_DEVICE
pkgconf/io_serial.h: #define CYGPKG_IO_SERIAL_POWERPC_QUICC_SMC
pkgconf/io_serial.h: #undef  CYGPKG_IO_SERIAL_POWERPC_QUICC_SMC_SMC1
pkgconf/io_serial.h: #define  CYGPKG_IO_SERIAL_POWERPC_QUICC_SMC_SMC2


I'll send a bug report to Cygnus, but I wanted to see if anyone
else had this working first.

Here are the URLs for the sample app and Makefile.  
The printf's come out on the gdb console.

http://www.bluebutton.com/ecos-discuss/Makefile
http://www.bluebutton.com/ecos-discuss/serialtest.c

-Jamie

Re: [ECOS] Transceiver required for SMC2 on MPC821?

[Stephen Worthington]

** Reply to note from Jamie Guinan <guinan@bluebutton.com> Tue, 19 Oct 1999 22:29:34 -0400 (EDT)
>   
>   
> Hi all,
>   
> I'm trying to get output from the SMC2 port on my
> MBX board (MPC821).
>   
> Is it necessary to put a transceiver between the SMC2
> pins and the serial cable if you want to talk to an
> RS-232 port at the other end?  The SMC2 Tx/Rx, and GND
> pins are available at header J1, but I had no
> luck wiring them up to a serial port.  Maybe the
> 821 can't drive the RS-232 voltages?

I can not think of a processor that can directly output RS-232.  It is
probably possible, but most processors avoid having or having to
generate a +/- 12 V supply (the -12 V is the real problem).

We use the MAX207 chip (or one of its siblings) for this sort of thing -
it lots of capability (5 drivers, 3 receivers).  It should do the trick
if you have a 5 V supply available.  It does require external capacitors
though (0.1 uF), for the charge pumps that create the voltages.  See
www.maxim.com.

I do hope that you have not blown up your SMC pins by applying RS-232
voltages directly to them already though.  If there was insufficient
current available (which is not unlikely if the drivers at the other
end are really to spec), you should be OK.

--
Stephen Worthington              Telephone: +64-4-569 6764 (home)
Digi-Tech Communications Ltd                +64-4-389 8909 (work)
stephen@digitech.co.nz (work)          Fax: +64-4-389 9901 (work)
stephen@inisant.actrix.gen.nz (home)    http://www.digitech.co.nz