New to Coldfire, looking for programming solutions (TBLCF?)

[hhedeshian]

Hello Freescale community,

I've been trying to put together a proof of concept board that is capable of booting uCLinux. The best solution I have found so far is the Netburner MOD5272. It appears uCLinux specifically supports the MOD5272 as well as the associated Coldfire V2 MCU (MCF5272). While these modules are nice and pretty, they don't have the functionality required for the project (POE) and needless to say, the professor won't be too happy if I just used a dev board (have to build something). All of the previous designs I've worked on were smaller MCUs (ARM7, AVR, etc...) which had on board flash programmable through JTAG or some other method which meant that I could wire a boot loader and then program external flash through the serial port or some other interface.

The Problem/Question:

The MOD5272 comes with a boot loader, however, any board I build will have a vanilla flash chip with nothing on it. I'm not sure I completely understand how to program the flash through the debug ports on the MCF5272 devices. I'm aware they have JTAG and a BDM port which on the MCF527x is mutually exclusive. If I understand correctly, JTAG on the coldfire is not very useful? Can the JTAG port be used to program parallel flash (i.e.. JS28F128P30T85A)? I think the answer is no (not sure). We have JTAG cables available, as well as some tools for them.

Let's say JTAG will not be sufficient and I have to use the BDM. Will the BDM be capable of programming flash? We do not have any BDM interfaces available. The cheapest commercial solution I could find was from PE for (parallel cable) $200 + $300 for the software. The entire project's budget is $500; that's enough to do 4 revisions of our board! Debug is nice, but I have access to logic analyzers so debug capability is not too important. I just need to be able to program the flash.

Which leads me to something called TBLCF. It looks like I can find it for $45 assembled which is far more reasonable. Will it work with the MCF5272? It looks like it works with "BDM Tools" (http://bdm.sourceforge.net/) in Linux?

Thanks for taking the time to read the long post. I appreciate it.

Harout

(Edit: typo)

[ChrisJohns]

The BDM tools in the BDM project support programming flash devices on the board. It can support code modules downloaded to RAM to program the flash. If your flash is not support it is easy to add. All the code is open source and free to use and we only ask you send us any patches back.

I cannot comment on Netburn boards as I have never recieved any info regarding support from Paul or anyone else at Netburned. Do they still use GPL code or tools with their products ?

[hhedeshian]

First off, thanks for the responses everyone.

>>The BDM tools in the BDM project support programming flash devices on the board.

I saw in the docs on sourceforge that flashlib supports 29Fxxxx series flash parts. A quick search for parts shows that there are both NAND and NOR type parts covered under the 29Fxxxx blanket. Are both types supported? I suppose it's not an issue to do a custom loader that gets loaded into the onboard SRAM through the BDM and then run from there to load the Flash part.

>>Do they still use GPL code or tools with their products ?

They use GCC for compiling. The included software stack is uC/OS RTOS which isn't cheap. I'll be working almost 100% with GNU tools so I would pretty much require raw access to the flash.

I'm thinking of using redboot since it supports this arch and is capable of booting linux.

Regarding TBLCF, am I correct that the TBLCF design needs to be modified to support the MCF527x series parts? I'm referring to one of the later posts on this thread: https://community.freescale.com/thread/17542

Evtek linked a design for a parallel port loader with a CPLD, I'm assuming this is supposed to work like the PE device; will this work with BDM tools?

Thanks

Harout Hedeshian

[ChrisJohns]

I am not sure which devices are covered. It is not difficult to add the support you may need and any changes would be most welcome. Just email me them and I will commit them.

>>>>Do they still use GPL code or tools with their products ?

>>They use GCC for compiling. The included software stack is uC/OS RTOS which isn't cheap. I'll be working

>>almost 100% with GNU tools so I would pretty much require raw access to the flash.

I have not looked at uC/OS but remember a strange license and some limits like task priorities or tasks on the same priority. Anyway this is not on topic.

Redboot is a good boot monitor. There is micro-monitor and umon. These are all worth a look.

On the 5272, yes the logic is needed. The flip-flops have been added to later devices and are not needed but for the earilier Coldfire's this is a know problem and hardware is the only solution to ensure the timing is met.

If the pod works like a PE parallel port device then yes it should work.

[aersek]

As dasign base for your board is best to use design of development board on which you add you options (PoE...). Using BDM port is posible to do apsolutly anything on board and processor. Also is posible to download bootloader to external flash. Princip of uploading flash is to store flashing algorithm to internal RAM of processor using BDM  and then receive new application which will flashing algorithm write to memory (internal flash or external flash). CF flasher utility is very useful for uploading of bootloader, but in it are only supported PE cables. TBLCF is full compatibile BDM inface and can be used from CodeWarrior to upload image to flash.

Regards

aersek