Debugger choice for StarCore DSPs

[bender]

Hi,

I have a DSP related project (software defined radio - baseband processing) and I have a choice of 2 different DSPs.

One of them is the MSC711x on the EVM board. The other comes from ADI.

The EVM provides a parallel port connector for a LPT-JTAG connection.

What choice of USB based debuggers are available besides the USBTAP? (I find USBTAP really expensive)

Is OSBDM supporting the MSC711x series? It would be really neat to have OSBDM support.

Thanks!

Mark

[AndrewinApps]

Do you already have CodeWarrior 10.x, or would you be using an older version (3.x)?

For 10.x, your only option right now is via the USBTAP.

If you happen to have an older version, depending on the version - you might be able to get away with a MacGraigor wiggler, but this is no longer officially supported, so you would be on your own with getting it working. (And I believe the price was comparable to a USBTAP as well, but not as fast)

Regards,

-Andrew

[AndrewinApps]

I just realized you asked via USB. USBTAP is pretty much it.
Wiggler was not USB.

[bender]

Thanks Andrew!

There's no problem getting a Wiggler (I already have one I used for some Cortex-M3 MCUs). My problem is that I only have a parallel port on my old desktop PC, which I gave it away recently.

My new PC doesn't have a parallel port anymore and I wanted to ask if there's support from OSBDM for these DSPs.

It is sad that Freescale doesn't offer support for these DSPs in OSBDM or make the information public so anyone can build their own cheap debuggers.

My personal belief is that all those open source debuggers made the Freescale products more popular with engineers and when the engineers are getting used with a product there's a big chance they'll use it for commercial projects.

I haven't worked with S08 nor the CFV1 in the past, but due to the popularity of the open source debuggers, I built myself one (USBDM) and then I discovered the 2 families. Needles to say, I used them both on some commercial projects. Maybe support for these DSPs will be added in the future ... hopefully

I am using CodeWarrior 2.6. I don't know if MSC7119 is supported in CW 10. Is it?

As for the USBTAP, it is probably a good tool (I haven't worked with it) but it is too expensive ($495 only for the debugger) for someone wanting to evaluate a product.

The other choice for a DSP in my project is ADI's BF537 EZLITE. Their evaluation board costs less ($380) than the USBTAP alone and it provides an integrated debugger with USB connectivity and a board-locked licence for the board. Maybe this should be heard by the higher management and do something about this.

It would be nice if the CW team would make public the information needed so anyone can build their own low-cost USB debugger, even for these Starlite DSPs.

Mark

[Irene]

Currently we don't support the Starlite boards on the 10.0 version of the tools.  I can make your request into a feature request because at this time we only support usbtap and ethernet tap.  I think they drop support of the wiggler because we were always running into configurations issues with the wigglers. I used the wiggler on the 56x family and we had parallel port configuration issues on some of the laptops.  USBTAP and Ethernet TAP seemed to be more reliable.

[bender]

Thanks Irene!

I've managed to put my hands on a USBTAP (for a few days or so) and I've discovered some interesting things.

I've installed the last classic IDE (CW 3.2.2) using a 30 days licence along with the CW 2.6 on a desktop PC that also featured a parallel port.

I've used the wizard to run the CW provided examples and here's what I've found so far:

- when using the MSC711xEVM with CW 2.6 and parallel port, everything went fine. CW 3.2.2 doesn't work with PP. Could this be a problem with 3.2.2?

- I also hooked up the USBTAP and tried to run the same example using the USB debugger, but I only got errors from the CCS that CW cannot connect to the target board. (I read the EVM manual and prior to hooking up the USBTAP I've changed the JP1 to 2-3 position for external debugger; position 1-2 is used with PP). Also, when I tried the USBTAP I went to project settings, then Debugger->Remote Debugging->Edit Connection->Connection type and I chose the USBTAP. I tried running the board with USBTAP in both CW 2.6 and CW 3.2.2 with no success.

- The USBTAP works fine and my friend is using it without problems on his 56 series EVM that he owns and also on a MSC8101EVM with CW 3.2.2. So, after all, the USBTAP works fine with CW 3.2.2. Maybe there's some setting on the 711xEVM that I missed ... ?

So, I tried to go into details and I found out in the CCS folder of the CW installation the "lptjtag.dll" file. I've inspected this file and I found out it exports JTAG related functions. Is it possible to have access to the API of this DLL? If yes, building a low cost USB JTAG (like JM60 based, OSBDM?) would be very easy indeed.

Mark 

[Irene]

The CodeWarrior for StarCore v3.2 doesn't support parallel port.  So for the MSC7111  board you can only use it with the 2.6 version of the tools with parallel port.  Where do you connect the USBTAP to on the board? do you connect it to P9?  You can actually take the jumper off of JP1. 

You have t to make sure that you have installed the drivers for the USBTAP.  If you look in your ccs folder under the CW istallation directory you should see a drivers folder.  run setup.exe in that folder.  The installation wizard should appear and install drivers. 

[bender]

Well, I saw CW 3.2.2 removed the support for the parallel port (I checked the debugger settings and I saw the PP wasn't there) so I've used only the USBTAP with CW 3.2.2

CW 3.2.2

- MSC711xEVM + USBTAP - not working (USBTAP connected to P9; I've tried with JP1 off and even on)

- MSC8101EVM + USBTAP - OK -> So, the USBTAP is working fine

I presumed that something might be wrong with the 711xEVM so, I've tried it with CW 2.6 but this time using a parallel port connection. The board worked ok so I was able to run the predefined 711x demo project with no problem. So, it seems the 711x board is ok as well.

CW 2.6

- MSC711xEVM + PP - OK

I don't know what can be wrong here, the tools (CW 3.2.2) or maybe the CPLD on the 711xEVM. However, the PP signals are ok going through the CPLD.

Is there any way for Freescale to provide the "lpjtag.dll" API? Having the API I would build my own debugger (USB based for sure) that would work with this board. It would be ashame to leave this board to collect dust when it can be used for so many nice things ...

Thanks!

[bender · Accepted solution]

It's been a long time since my previous post but I just wanted to share with the community that I've found the reason for which the MSC7119 board wasn't working with the USBTAP.

I found the problem by connecting an external parallel port Macraigor Wiggler to the EOnce P9 (JTAG) port.

Using the wiggler I was able to download code and have the board running with no issues. It wasn't working at all with USBTAP. However, USBTAP was working fine with other boards.

So, I managed to connect a logic analyzer to the pins to see what was happening there.

I have found out the RESET signal was kept low when using the USBTAP, while with the Wiggler it worked fine.

I realized a quite strong pull-down resistor was hooked to the JTAG RESET line. I used the multimeter and I have measured ~970 ohms of resistance, when referenced to the digital ground.

I have searched in the schematics and I've found out the culprit resistor was R147 having a value of 1K.

It was clear, the USBTAP couldn't drive this line to logic "1" (3.3V).

After changing the resistor to a 10K one, everything went fine and I was able to use the USBTAP with this board.