[ECOS] StrongARM SA1110

[ECOS] StrongARM SA1110

[Warren Jasper]

-- 

I am trying to port eCos to a development board which uses the
Intel StrongARM SA1110.  I have 2 questions.

1. In your instructions for the tools set, is the default
   Little Endian or Big Endian.  Is there a way to tell if
   the cross compiler is configured one way or the other by default?
   I know about the -EB and -EL flags.  The cross compiler is
   called  arm-elf-gcc

2. I configured eCos for the target assabet, which appears to the
   the correct target for the StrongARM SA 1110.  Since the StrongARM
   is basically a SOC, a general Boot ROM Monitor should get me
   started.  I have 4 MB of Flash Boot ROM on the board.
   What is the exact name of the file that I should use to load into
   FLASH?  If one is precompiled, is it for Big or Little Endian?

   Thanks,


	-- Warren

Warren J. Jasper
wjasper@tx.ncsu.edu

Re: [ECOS] StrongARM SA1110

[Lewin A.R.W. Edwards]

>1. In your instructions for the tools set, is the default
>    Little Endian or Big Endian.  Is there a way to tell if

In general it seems Red Hat prefers little-endian. Past discussions on this 
list have indicated that not everything is guaranteed to work in big-endian 
mode.

>    the cross compiler is configured one way or the other by default?
>    I know about the -EB and -EL flags.  The cross compiler is
>    called  arm-elf-gcc

Have you tried a simple test program?

int main(void) {
unsigned int u;
unsigned char *p;

u = 0x12345678u;
p = (unsigned char *) &u;
printf("%2X:%2X:%2X:%2X\n",*p,*(p+1),*(p+2),*(p+3));
}

I don't know exact answers to your second question, but if you did an 
"ecosconfig new assabet redboot" and then "ecosconfig tree" then "make" you 
would wind up with the RedBoot debugger/loader for the Assabet board. 
Exactly how to load this onto the target board varies with hardware. I'm 
using ARM, not SA, so I can't advise much there :) THe closest document I 
can see is 
< http://sources.redhat.com/ecos/docs-latest/tutorials/arm/ecos-tutorial.d.html#pgfId=2562385 >.

=== Lewin A.R.W. Edwards (Embedded Engineer)
Work: http://www.digi-frame.com/
Personal: http://www.zws.com/ and http://www.larwe.com/

"Und setzet ihr nicht das Leben ein,
Nie wird euch das Leben gewonnen sein."

Re: [ECOS] StrongARM SA1110

[Jonathan Larmour]

"Lewin A.R.W. Edwards" wrote:
> 
> >1. In your instructions for the tools set, is the default
> >    Little Endian or Big Endian.  Is there a way to tell if
> 
> In general it seems Red Hat prefers little-endian.

More specifically, most eval board vendors prefer little-endian. We can
only follow them.

> Past discussions on this
> list have indicated that not everything is guaranteed to work in big-endian
> mode.

We do test big-endian operation on certain platforms. Some device drivers
may not have been tested on a big-endian platform though (although that's
not to say they won't work). Do you have any specific problems to report?

> I don't know exact answers to your second question, but if you did an
> "ecosconfig new assabet redboot" and then "ecosconfig tree" then "make" you
> would wind up with the RedBoot debugger/loader for the Assabet board.
> Exactly how to load this onto the target board varies with hardware. I'm
> using ARM, not SA, so I can't advise much there :) THe closest document I
> can see is
> < http://sources.redhat.com/ecos/docs-latest/tutorials/arm/ecos-tutorial.d.html#pgfId=2562385 >.

Instead look at:

http://sources.redhat.com/ecos/docs-latest/redboot/redboot.7.html#pgfId=2688227

for the Assabet.

Also just doing "ecosconfig new assabet redboot" may be sufficient but is
not really complete. As mentioned at
http://sources.redhat.com/ecos/docs-latest/redboot/redboot.5.html#pgfId=2639328
you should use configuration export files supplied with each platform. So
for the assabet, look in hal/arm/sa11x0/assabet/current/misc/ for the .ecm
files.

Jifl
-- 
Red Hat, Rustat House, Clifton Road, Cambridge, UK. Tel: +44 (1223) 271062
Maybe this world is another planet's Hell -Aldous Huxley || Opinions==mine

Re: [ECOS] StrongARM SA1110

[Lewin A.R.W. Edwards]

> > In general it seems Red Hat prefers little-endian.
>
>More specifically, most eval board vendors prefer little-endian. We can
>only follow them.

I'm not complaining, just summarizing what I had read in my perusal of the 
list over the past few months.

>not to say they won't work). Do you have any specific problems to report?

No. I'm not using the SA1110 (though I might be in a couple of months time) 
and I have no reason to run in big-endian mode. I believe that when I said 
"it might not work because it isn't fully tested" I was in fact 
paraphrasing a comment you made. I know it was a comment made quite 
recently on this list by a Red Hat person.

=== Lewin A.R.W. Edwards (Embedded Engineer)
Work: http://www.digi-frame.com/
Personal: http://www.zws.com/ and http://www.larwe.com/

"Und setzet ihr nicht das Leben ein,
Nie wird euch das Leben gewonnen sein."