I like to extend the OpenOCD software to support a target microcontroller (Target Layer) that is not yet supported. How I have to start with? Is there someone had already similar experience?
I have access to all microcontroller JTAG and OCDS details and documentation, so, I would just need an hint of what files to be generated and modified in the OpenOCD project.
At the end I would like to have another microcontroller liste in the "Target Layer" list of OpenOCD (https://sourceforge.net/projects/openocd/files/openocd/0.10.0/)
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I need to learn to program MSP430, but don't have the actual chip yet. All configurations that I've tried at Code Composer Studio (except Snapshot, but it does not count, right?) require something on my USB. How do I learn to program the chip without the chip?
And what is an emulator that requires a USB?
Online emulator (used chrome): http://www.msp430emulator.com
This MSP430 Emulator is open source, and can be used directly online without downloading anything. Still under construction but has a good debug interface. Unfortunately no integration with CCS.
It is on the TI Open source page: TI Open Source Project Page
"The MSP430 Online Emulator provides a complete software model of the MSP430 16-bit instruction set. It is an interactive debugger for advanced development and in depth firmware/hardware analysis. Peripherals include UART, GPIO Ports, BCM+, Timer_A, and more! Open source, and absolutely free - access to the TI MSP430 Launchpad allows you to effectively build and debug firmware. No hardware setup, emulate anytime anywhere!"
open source on github:
https://github.com/RudolfGeosits/MSP430-Emulator
If you need something implemented you can add to the code yourself and run a local emulation server for real time applications.
This emulator is pretty awesome, once you can get it running. Note that it does claim GDB support, which likely means you can get a pure eclipse CDT C project & CDT-GDB-HW-Debugging session up and running against it (making sure to compile with the msp430's tool chain, of course).
http://opencores.org/project,openmsp430
As far as a simulator, the answer is truly 'no'. I would like to be wrong on that... But consider for a moment the number of variants of the msp430, the peripherals, and so on. Not sure if any company can justify that kind of cost!
Especially when launchpad/etc are so cheap and fast.
If you can afford £10 then the launchpad is the way to go just to teach yourself about the MSP430. You can use either IAR Embedded Workbench or Code Composer Studio, both which come in code size limited version which will be plenty big enough to learn with. I don't like either, but of the two the IAR one is, IMHO, the better bet as it's not Eclipse based. If you don't mind Java and Eclipse, then CCS is a viable option for you. One huge advantage with CCS is it runs on Linux, but really, it's still not a patch on Rowley Crossworks which runs on Linux. The latter has a cheap educational licence.
As far as the emulator and USB question is concerned, it's maybe being slightly pedantic, but it's not an emulator, it's a debug interface. There is a debugger built into the chip that enables you to load the code into the chip, set breakpoints, single step through code.
This kit is a great way to start because the debugger interface is built into the kit, you can access pins on the processor, see LEDs come on and all that good stuff that gives you the warm feeling you're programming a chip properly. For the sake of £10 you'd be mad not to!
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I have purchased a Tiva C series LaunchPad TM4C123G Evaluation Kit from Texas Instruments. This kit contains a small PCB with an ARM Cortex M4F microcontroller. Now I want to start writing software for this microcontroller. I am used to program AVR 8-bit microcontrollers using AVR Studio on Windows. I heard that it shoud be easy to program ARM-based microcontrollers on Linux, and since Linux is my main platform, I would like a simple IDE that will work more or less like I am used to from AVR.
For several days I have been searching for a good IDE and tools that will do the job. To my surprise, only a few will run on Linux, and none is open source or freeware. Can this really be true? I do not want to spend several hundred dollars just to try out some programming for the Cortex M4F. Nor do I want to learn one IDE now and then another later when I found out it is not good enough or too expensive. I am used to Linux and the open source way of doing things and I am very shocked that nobody seem to be doing any serious embedded ARM programming with open source tools on Linux. Please correct me if I am wrong.
I have no plans running Linux on the Cortex M4F - I just want to program it like a normal microcontroller.
Texas Instruments recommends one of the following tool chains on the back cover of the evaluation kit:
Code Composer Studio IDE: full functional board locked
Keil: 32KB address limited
IAR: 32KB address limited
Mentor Embedded Sourcery CodeBench: 30-day full functional
I have also been recommended Red Studio from code_red.
Neither is open source or free and all have limitations. It seems to me that only Code Composer Studio and Red Studio is Linux compatible.
I stumbled upon yet another product, Rowley CrossWorks, which is also Linux compatible but still very commercial and expensive.
Is it really true that there is no open source alternative? Most of the products seem to use Eclipse and GCC, which one should be able to do without these commercial packages, right? I just can't find any tutorial or guide explaining how to do set this up for embedded ARM programming. Also I need to know how to program the device after compiling.
I really want to get started soon. Any advice and ideas are very appreciated :-)
It's always the same, no matter which eval board you have: STM32 discovery, LPCXpresso, TI Launchpads. They are very cheap, but the recommended IDEs are limited: Their code size is limited, Windows only, or they are bound to a specific Linux distribution.
In my experience the choice depends on your long-term goals:
Do you want to share code with AVR 8-bit (or PIC32, Renesas RX 32, ...)?
Is it a mid-term/long-term goal to have a build system based on make?
Do you need tab-completion and/or an integrated debugger?
Do you want to try other eval boards in the future (without being forced to install yet another IDE)?
or do you just want to get this one up and running quickly. In that case I would use one of the recommended IDEs to get an impression.
On the other hand, all 32-bit microcontrollers I have used (Cortex-M0/3/4, PIC32, Renesas RX) can be programmed with gcc. As far as I know Code Red, Mentor, and MPLABX use gcc (or a modified gcc).
So there is always the possibility to use Eclipse with a Makefile project, and gcc.
I have tried it twice, but it did not work well for me, because I share libraries between the different targets, and I found it difficult to pass around the defines in Eclipse.
So my IDE is Makefile, Emacs, and gcc, and I have switched completely to using C++: This might be another advantage of using gcc.
Both possibilities (Eclipse with Makefile project or just editor with make) are not "off the shelf": They require time, patience, and your favourite Internet search engine.
Update
I am not aware of a complete tutorial on how to setup a GCC + make based environment, so I simply describe the basic steps I did it some years ago (with some changes).
Get a binary distribution of GCC for ARM from https://launchpad.net/gcc-arm-embedded
The following steps are STM32 specific:
Get one of the discovery boards, for example the STM32 value line Discovery.
Get a flash utility: I am using stlink (git clone https://github.com/texane/stlink.git). This includes a GDB backend as well.
There are various examples available, search for "stm32vl discovery blink" (I cannot recommend one here, the one I used has vanished)
As an alternative (or follow-up): Get the Peripheral firmware examples
You will find a GNU ld compatible linker script in Project/Examples/GPIOToggle/TrueSTUDIO/stm32_flash.ld
You will find a GNU as compatible startup in Libraries/CMSIS/CM3/DeviceSupport/ST/STM32F10x/startup/TrueSTUDIO/startup_stm32f10x_ld_vl.s
You will find all other required library include files and sources in the .zip archive as well
Look at the GPIOToggle project (Project/Examples/GPIOToggle)
Write a Makefile to compile, link, and flash
To build your own development environment you could use the following combination:
Eclipse CDT
Get the toolchain to be used (official GCC version or some third-party customized for your platform)
Integrate the toolchain into Eclipse environment either through the internal Eclipse build system (CDT builder) or through some external builder (i.e. make)
In order to have JTAG debugging support, there is a GDB Hardware Debugging Eclipse plug-in you will need to setup
I've managed to complete my own setup in such a way for LPC1769 (Cortex-M3 CPU) and it worked :)
I am new to angstrom and linux. I am in the process of building an sdk with angstrom. But I cant understand what is a Toolchain and its functionality. Please someone help me here.
In software, a toolchain is the set of programming tools that are used to create a product (typically another computer program or system of programs). The tools may be used in a chain, so that the output of each tool becomes the input for the next, but the term is used widely to refer to any set of linked development tools.
A simple software development toolchain consists of a compiler and linker to transform the source code into an executable program, libraries to provide interfaces to the operating system, and a debugger.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toolchain
I am a newbie to embedded developement, as figure shown. I have a small ARM board, AT91SAM7-EX256. I have also a JTAG programmer dongle, too. I am using Linux (Ubuntu x86_32) on my notebook and desktop machine. I'm using CodeSourcery Lite for cross-compiling to ARM-Linux.
Am I right that I can't use this Linux-target cross-compiler to make binary or hex files for the small ARM board (it comes without any operating system)? Should I use the version called ARM EABI instead?
As I see, it's a "generic" ARM compiler. I've read some docs, and there're lot of options to specify the processor type and instruction set (thumb, etc.), there will be no problem with it. But how can I tell the compiler, how should the image (bin/hex) looks like for the specific board (startup, code/data blocks etc.)? (In assemblers, there're the org and load directives for it.)
What software do I need to capture some debug messages from the board on my PC? I don't want to on-board debugging, I just need some detailed run-time signal, more than just blinking leds.
I have an option to use MS-Windows, I can get a dedicated machine for it. Do you recommend it, is it much easier?
Can I use inline assembly somehow in my C code? I dunno anything about that. Can I use C++ or just C?
I have also a question, which don't need to answer: are there really 4096 kind of GNU compilers and cross-compilers (from Linux_x86_32 -> Linux_x86_32, Linux_x86_32 -> Linux_ARM, OSX -> Linux_ARM, PPC_Linux -> OSX) and 16 different GNU compiler sources (as many target platforms/processors exists) around? The signs says "yes", but I can't believe it. Correct me, and show me the GNU compiler which can produce object file for any platform/processor, and the universal linker which can produce executable for any platform.
While Windows is not a "better" platform do this kind of embedded development on, it may be easier to start with since you can get a pre-built environment to work with. For example, Yagarto (which I would recommend).
Setting up an embedded development environment on Linux can require a considerable amount of knowledge, but it's not impossible.
To answer your questions:
Your Linux cross-compiler comes with libraries to build executables for a Linux environment. You have hinted that you want to build a bare-metal executable for this board. While you can do this with your compiler, it will just confuse things. I recommend building a baremetal cross-compiler. Since you're building your own baremetal executable (and thus you are the operating system, the ABI doesn't matter since you're generating all of the code and not interoperating with other previously built code.
There are several versions of the ARM instruction set (and Thumb). You need to generate code for your particular processor. If you generate the code for a newer version of the instruction set, you will likely generate code which generates a reserved instruction exception. Most prebuilt gcc cross-compiler toolchains for ARM are "multilib" and will build for a variety of architectures in both ARM and Thumb.
Not sure exactly what you're looking for here. This is a bare metal platform. You can use the debugger channel to send messages if you're debugging on target, or you'll need to build your own communication channel into the firmware you write (i.e. uart support).
See above.
Yes. See here for details on gcc's extended inline assembly syntax. You can do this in C++ and C. You can also simply link pure assembly files.
There is no universal gcc compiler / linker. You need a uniquely built compiler for each host / target combination you use.
Finally, please take a look at Atmel's documentation. They have a wealth of information on developing for this target as well as a board package with the needed linker directives and example programs. Note of course the package is for Atmel's own eval board, but it will get you started.
http://sam7stuff.blogspot.com/
I use either of the codesourcery lite versions. But I have no use for the gcc library nor a C library, I just need a compiler.
In the gcc 3 days newlib was great, modify two files worth of system support (simple open, close, read, putc type stuff) and you could compile just about anything, but with gcc 4.x you cannot even go back and cross compile gcc 3.x, you have to install an old linux distro in a virtual machine.
To get the gcc library yes you probably want to use the eabi version not the version with linux gnueabi in the file names.
You might also consider llvm (if you dont need a C library, and you will still need binutils), hmm, I wonder if newlib compiles with llvm.
I prefer to avoid getting trapped in sandboxes, learn the tools and how to manipulate the linker, etc to build your binaries.
I'm interested in writing a boot loader for USB sticks that looks for a directory of ISOs and gives you the option to boot one of them as if it were a bootable CD. This is basically so I have a menu driven program that allows me to install one of several different distributions off of a USB stick.
Where would I go to figure out how to make this work? Do I need to install some kind of BIOS hack to allow remapping of CD blocks to blocks in the filesystem? How would that work once the boot from the CD had enough marbles to start trying to access the device directly?
are you looking to learn how bootloading works? if so, you could check out the grub docs here: http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/
otherwise, if you're trying to create a usb bootloader that can load a variety of operating systems, this tutorial looks like it covers it quite nicely: http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/articles/grub_intro/
I don't think it will dynamically build a loader of operating systems as they are available by reading the contents of a directory.