Power PC Application

Power PC Application

[William Blum]

We are working on a Motorola MPC860 Power PC project and want to use
Insight as the debug platform.  The target PPC is a 'bare' system.  We
plan to access the target using Macraigor 'Wiggler' or 'Blackbird' On
Chip Debug" (OCD) devices.  We have the PPC cross-toolchain, based on
egcs, in place and functional.  Can you tell us how we can go about
applying Insight for use in such an environment?

Regards,
Bill B.

Re: Power PC Application

[Brendan Simon]

William Blum wrote:

> We are working on a Motorola MPC860 Power PC project and want to use
> Insight as the debug platform.  The target PPC is a 'bare' system.  We
> plan to access the target using Macraigor 'Wiggler' or 'Blackbird' On
> Chip Debug" (OCD) devices.  We have the PPC cross-toolchain, based on
> egcs, in place and functional.  Can you tell us how we can go about
> applying Insight for use in such an environment?

The Wiggler is only useable on MS-Windows systems.  I don't know of any
wiggler drivers for any other OS which is quite annoying; but that's life
I guess.  I did a Canadian cross-compile of  Insight the was targeted for
powerpc-eabi and hosted on a MS-Windows machine using the Cygwin
environment.  It seem to run but it did crash or play up quite often.
This was the very first release of Insight so I put it down to it's
imaturity.  Apart from being buggy, the GUI was not settup for remote
downloads to embedded systems.  The only way to target the wiggler BDM
was to go to the gdb command prompt and type the usual setup stuff (eg.
"ocd wiggler lpt").  You will need a startup script to initialise the 860
registers and memory map etc.  One day I'll get around to looking at
Insight again.  We are currently using SDS Single Step on MS-Windows.  I
would dearly love to run Insight (preferably on a Linux box).

Brendan Simon.

Re: Power PC Application

[James Ingham]

Brendan,

 > William Blum wrote:
 > 
 > > We are working on a Motorola MPC860 Power PC project and want to use
 > > Insight as the debug platform.  The target PPC is a 'bare' system.  We
 > > plan to access the target using Macraigor 'Wiggler' or 'Blackbird' On
 > > Chip Debug" (OCD) devices.  We have the PPC cross-toolchain, based on
 > > egcs, in place and functional.  Can you tell us how we can go about
 > > applying Insight for use in such an environment?
 > 
 > The Wiggler is only useable on MS-Windows systems.  I don't know of any
 > wiggler drivers for any other OS which is quite annoying; but that's life
 > I guess.  I did a Canadian cross-compile of  Insight the was targeted for
 > powerpc-eabi and hosted on a MS-Windows machine using the Cygwin
 > environment.  It seem to run but it did crash or play up quite often.

Was there anything in particular that seemed to give it trouble, or
was it just general instability?

 > This was the very first release of Insight so I put it down to it's
 > imaturity.  Apart from being buggy, the GUI was not settup for remote
 > downloads to embedded systems.  

This is not entirely true.  Insight is not currently set up for use with
the wiggler target.  It IS set up to do normal gdb remote protocol
stuff.  It is also setup to do some other kinds of DLL based remote
debugging.  

It would be pretty straight-forward to add support for the BDM to
Insight, and I will be happy to help anyone who wants to do so get
started.

 >                                    The only way to target the wiggler BDM
 > was to go to the gdb command prompt and type the usual setup stuff (eg.
 > "ocd wiggler lpt").  You will need a startup script to initialise the 860
 > registers and memory map etc.  One day I'll get around to looking at
 > Insight again.  We are currently using SDS Single Step on MS-Windows.  I
 > would dearly love to run Insight (preferably on a Linux box).
 > 

Jim

Re: Power PC Application

[Brendan Simon]

James Ingham wrote:

> Brendan,
>
>  > The Wiggler is only useable on MS-Windows systems.  I don't know of any
>  > wiggler drivers for any other OS which is quite annoying; but that's life
>  > I guess.  I did a Canadian cross-compile of  Insight the was targeted for
>  > powerpc-eabi and hosted on a MS-Windows machine using the Cygwin
>  > environment.  It seem to run but it did crash or play up quite often.
>
> Was there anything in particular that seemed to give it trouble, or
> was it just general instability?

It was a while ago now but I think it was a bit of both.  I particularly
remember trying to set breakpoints and it seemed that the code would execute
without ever stopping at the breakpoints.
I've just had a quick revisit and played with it using the simulator target.
I'm impressed again :)  It didn't playup and it broke at every breakpoint.
I noticed that I too had link errors for crt0 so I used -msim.  This implies
that my other tests on our hardware was using the -mads option which may have
been the cause of the problems I was seeing.  Alternatively, I do have access
to a Motorola ADS board and I may have tried with that piece of hardware but it
is so long ago now that I can't quite remember.


>  > This was the very first release of Insight so I put it down to it's
>  > imaturity.  Apart from being buggy, the GUI was not settup for remote
>  > downloads to embedded systems.
>
> This is not entirely true.  Insight is not currently set up for use with
> the wiggler target.  It IS set up to do normal gdb remote protocol
> stuff.  It is also setup to do some other kinds of DLL based remote
> debugging.
>
> It would be pretty straight-forward to add support for the BDM to
> Insight, and I will be happy to help anyone who wants to do so get
> started.

That would be very cool.  There are quite a few people using BDM for Motorola
processors.  This would also be good the these embedded systems running eCos.
I tried using the BDM with a Linux port to the MPC860 but it died.  The gurus
on the powerpc-linux mailing list said it is impossible to use the BDM with
Linux due to its virtual memory management etc.

Brendan.

Re: Power PC Application

[Kai Ruottu]

James Ingham wrote:
> 
> Brendan,
> 
>  > William Blum wrote:
>  >
>  > > We are working on a Motorola MPC860 Power PC project and want to use
>  > > Insight as the debug platform.  The target PPC is a 'bare' system.  We
>  > > plan to access the target using Macraigor 'Wiggler' or 'Blackbird' On
>  > > Chip Debug" (OCD) devices.  We have the PPC cross-toolchain, based on
>  > > egcs, in place and functional.  Can you tell us how we can go about
>  > > applying Insight for use in such an environment?
>
>  > This was the very first release of Insight so I put it down to it's
>  > imaturity.  Apart from being buggy, the GUI was not settup for remote
>  > downloads to embedded systems.
> 
> This is not entirely true.  Insight is not currently set up for use with
> the wiggler target.  It IS set up to do normal gdb remote protocol
> stuff.  It is also setup to do some other kinds of DLL based remote
> debugging.
> 
> It would be pretty straight-forward to add support for the BDM to
> Insight, and I will be happy to help anyone who wants to do so get
> started.

 Ok, how to enable both the serial ('target ocd com2') and the Wiggler i/f
in the OCD/Wiggler entry in 'gdbtcl/targetselection.itb' ?

 I made the following addition, but don't fully understand the parsing:

  # OCD/Wiggler
  set gdb_target(ocd,pretty-name) "OCD/Wiggler"
  set gdb_target(ocd,defbaud) ""
  set gdb_target(ocd,baud-rates) {}
  set gdb_target(ocd,cmd) "ocd wiggler lpt1"
  set gdb_target(ocd,runlist) {1 1 0 1}
  set gdb_target(ocd,after_attaching) {}

 I understand that the 'com1' and 'tcpX' will be replaced with the right stuff,
but how to enable the selection list for 'lpt1', 'lpt2' and 'lpt3'?

  # TARGET,cmd: Abstracted command to run for this target (tcpX and com1 are
  #		replaced with the real port and host/port in set_target)

 For the 'ocd wiggler' I first tried a 'ocdwiggler', leaving the 'ocd' for
the serial case, but it didn't work... So the entry was left as it is shown.

>  > The only way to target the wiggler BDM was to go to the gdb command prompt
>  > and type the usual setup stuff (eg. "ocd wiggler lpt").

 An updated 'targetselection.itb', and of course a prebuilt Insight for ppc-eabi,
but for the native Mingw32-host, is downloadable via:

  www.saunalahti.fi/~ankosk2/embtools.htm

 There are quite many 'targets' added, not only the 'ocd' one, and the script
is inside the 'h83fix2.zip' (the second fix package for the gcc-2.95.1 H8/300-
release).

>  > You will need a startup script to initialise the 860 registers and memory map etc.
>  > One day I'll get around to looking at Insight again.

  # TARGET,after_attaching: a command to run after attaching to the target

 Filling the space between the braces with the script name, in the last row in the
previously shown entry, would perhaps automatize this...

Cheers, Kai