I'm having difficulties deploying to a DEMO9S12XEP100

[bigbearbrian]

Hello.

Please forgive my ignorance, I'm trying to make repairs to a system developed by a friend, now unfortunately deceased.

He developed a system of DEMO9S12XEP100 boards, plus custom wire-wrap boards, all connected by CAN-BUS, for our model railroad club. One of the DEMO boards failed (most-obvious symptom: very hot power regulator, but desoldering and replacing it only resulted in another very hot power regulator, suggesting more damage than I can repair physically), and I'm attempting to deploy his code to one of the few spares we've got.

I've got CodeWarrior 5.1 Special Edition, installed on Windows 10 Home (x86) running in Oracle VirtualBox (a previous question revealed there are no x64 drivers extent, and I don't have any machines to install a x86 physical machine.) During CodeWarrior installation, all the drivers appeared to install successfully.

When I start up VirtualBox, I choose to attach the "SofTec Microsystems uDART In-Circuit Debugger", which then shows up in Device Manager as recognized and working. This seems to confirm that the drivers installed properly.

I load the project, which has two Linker Maps: P&E_Multilink_CyclonePro.map and SofTec_HCS12.map

When I attempt to Debug the project, the True-Time Simulator & Real-Time Debugger opens up, but I get a dialog box:AVE

HI-WAVE: Communication error. Make sure that the USB cable is connected to the instrument and retry.

The board has USB for the Power Selector jumper, and both BOM ENA jumpers (Reset & BKGD) connected.

Any suggestions how I can go about deploying this project? Even hints? I've got significant experience in C#, and have spent a fair amount of time programming Arduinos and Netduinos, but this one has me stumped.

Brian Pickering

[RadekS]

Hi Brian,

Very hot power regulator typically doesn’t mean problem with power regulator itself (this part if quite robust), but typical problem is in damaged MCU. There is probably some shot between power lines and regulator tries to supply until overcurrent or overtemperature protection limits output current. This short (typically inside permanent damaged MCU) could be caused typically (in case of EVBs) by connecting high voltage signal or by some ESD discharge pulse.

So, MCU replacement will be probably necessary for repairing board. Of course, we should first test board without external loads for exclude external root cause.

Unfortunately I don’t have here PC with Win10 (x86) and I have no experience with Oracle VirtualBox.

I am not sure now, but if I remember correctly Softec driver do not work even on 32bit Vista and newer operating systems. What OS runs in your Virtual box. Could you please try WinXP?

Problem with connection)

Please check mainly:

1. Voltage – whether MCU is powered by correct voltage.
2. Clock – Please check your clock configuration. If you use assembled crystal, J105 connector should have assembled just one jumper on position CRYSTAL. If you use external CMOS oscillator (assembled on U102 socket), J105 connector should have assembled two jumpers on position XCLKS# and CLOCK

I hope it helps you.

Have a great day,
RadekS

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[bigbearbrian]

OK, to be clear: Once replacing the voltage regulator didn't work on the original board, it became yet another decoration on my "Wall of Dead Boards." I'm attempting to write the code to one of our few backup boards.

With that said, on to Radek's checklist:

Please check mainly:

1. Voltage – whether MCU is powered by correct voltage.
   BRIAN: It's powered by the USB cable, and I stated in the original post, "board has USB for the Power Selector jumper". If the MCU isn't powered by the correct voltage in this circumstance, something is REALLY wrong. :-)
2. Clock – Please check your clock configuration. If you use assembled crystal, J105 connector should have assembled just one jumper on position CRYSTAL. If you use external CMOS oscillator (assembled on U102 socket), J105 connector should have assembled two jumpers on position XCLKS# and CLOCK
   BRIAN: I'm using the "assembled crystal"; I checked this morning, and J105 is ONLY connected on the position CRYSTAL.

I'll be seeing another club member tomorrow who has a WinXP installation; we'll try that, and see if it is an OS problem. Working with XP, though... yet another reason to replace these... my brain feels dirty just thinking about it. (In Real Life, I'm a Security Engineer... 14-year-old OS give me fits.)

Brian Pickering

[RadekS · Accepted solution]

Hi Brian,

Thank you for details.

1. By checking voltage I mean rather measure voltage at VDDR/VDDX pin. If MCU is damaged and powered from 12V power supply, short inside may cause overcurrent and voltage at VDDX will drop down by overcurrent/temperature protection in power supply regulator (U501). Anyway, green LED LD501 should glow when board is powered by correct voltage.

Your MCU could be secured. Did you try unsecure procedure (In Code Warior debugger menu ->MultilinkCyclonePro->Unsecure… or Unsecure_12 utility)?

More details about S12(X) security feature:

https://community.freescale.com/docs/DOC-93803

You are right, WinXP is quite old OS. Unfortunately authors of this SofTec interface terminated cooperation with Freescale and henceforth they did not support this product. This is also one or reasons, why DEMO9S12XEP100 is no longer available for ordering. New board name is DEMOAX9S12XEP100: https://www.axman.com/content/demoax9s12

Note: this board differs from the old one.

Second option is using of any other external BDM interface (PEmicro, OSBDM, USBDM,…).

Note: SofTec and TBDML are not recommended – problem with drivers.

I hope it helps you.

Have a great day,
RadekS

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[bigbearbrian]

Radek,

Thank you for your assistance. There are three reasons I won't be looking at that alternative Freescale Demo board:

1. The person who developed our software passed away in September, so he's not going to be doing much support work for us.
2. I'm NOT an Assembly language developer (and I'm the closest we've got in our club)
3. Another proposed standard for this system was accepted instead of this system (Proposed standard for Layout Command Control (LCC) published for comments | National Model Railroad ..., although now that is ACCEPTED, not Proposed).

I won't be moving forward with the Freescale hardware. Just too many things pushing against it, and since I do have a few spares, it's not worth my time to troubleshoot and get the failed board working again.

With that said, I was able to use another club member's Windows XP laptop and CW5.1SE to deploy the code onto one of our spares this weekend. We'll be setting up the layout for a show this coming weekend, and hopefully that will demonstrate that it worked. With that, I'll probably go through the effort to make sure I've got a VM running Windows XP, Just In Case we have another failure before I finish deploying our new system (Home · bakerstu/openmrn Wiki · GitHub , an Open Source implementation of the Accepted Standard, written in C), hopefully this spring.

Thanks for your assistance,

Brian Pickering

[RadekS]

Hi Brian,

Thank you for testing WinXP. I am glad that it works.

Problem with SofTec BDM interface driver on DEMO9S12XEP100 board has nothing to do with selected Freescale MCU (S12XEP100).

On board BDM interface doesn’t need to be used for programming. You could simply assemble J106 6pin connector and use any other BDM interface like:

USB Multilink Universal
http://www.pemicro.com/products/product_viewDetails.cfm?product_id=15320137

OSBDM

http://www.pemicro.com/OSBDM/

USBDM

http://usbdm.sourceforge.net

for example: http://www.technologicalarts.ca/shop/store/details/573/21/microcontrollers/9s12/usb-bdm-pod-for-s08,...

…

You don’t need change anything in your project when you use different BDM interface. You just select appropriate connection in CW (“P&E USB BDM Multilink” for USB Multilink Universal/OSBDM or “TBDML” for USBDM)

DEMOAX9S12XEP100 board is assembled with the same S12XEP100 MCU, just OSBDM interface is used instead SofTec interface.

However if you have enough spare DEMO9S12XEP100 board, it is better to stay with old ones and just build/order BDM interface or use VM for emulate WinXP. It is up to you whether you choose VM running Windows XP and save money or you just spend money ($20..$200) for proper BDM interface (which works on newer operating systems).

BTW: thank you for very interesting link to LCC.

I hope it helps you.

Have a great day,
RadekS

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