Release Notes for the QNX Neutrino 6.4.1 BSP for Texas Instruments AM3517 EVM Board#

System requirements#

Target system#

• QNX Neutrino RTOS 6.4.1
• Board version: TI AM3517 EVM (Beta Board)
• ROM Monitor version: Texas Instruments X-Loader 1.42, UBoot 2009.03
• Micron 512 MB NAND flash: MT29F4G16ABCHC
• 256 MB DDR2 SDRAM

Host development system#

• QNX Momentics 6.4.1
• Terminal emulation program (Qtalk, Momentics IDE Terminal, tip, HyperTerminal, etc.)
• RS-232 serial port
• NULL-modem serial cable
• Ethernet link

System Layout#

The tables below depict the memory layout for the image and for the flash.

The interrupt vector table can be found in the buildfile located at src/hardware/startup/boards/am3517evm/build

Getting Started#

This BSP includes a prebuilt Out-Of-Box IFS image designed to support development with the Momentics IDE. This is also the default image created by the BSP and includes the following features:

• IPv4 networking support using DHCP to automatically configure the ethernet network interface.
• an LCD splash screen displaying the configured network settings together with Neutrino kernel version and hardware information.
• qconn and telnetd network services to support Momentics IDE remote target access.
  • telnet login is root with no password (please disable this for production images!).
• pdebug program and rcheck, mudflap libraries to support debugging and memory analysis from the Momentics IDE.
• runs an instrumented Neutrino kernel to support Momentics kernel tracing (also includes tracelogger program for tracing from the shell on the TI AM3517 EVM board).
• nfs2 filesystem resource manager to allow mounting network filesystems on the AM3517 EVM to simplify development processes.
• USB mass storage and SDCard drivers together with QNX4 and DOS file system resource managers to support removable storage devices on the AM3517 EVM.
• ftp client to transfer files to/from the AM3517 EVM from the shell prompt.
• a basic set of target shell commands for file system, process, and network management.

Step 1: Connect your hardware#

• Connect the serial cable from the serial port P1(UART3) of the AM3517 EVM experimenter board to the first serial port of your host machine (e.g. ser1 on a Neutrino host).
  • If you have a Neutrino host with a serial mouse, you may have to move the mouse to the second serial port on your host, because some terminal programs require the first serial port.
• Connect a Cat-5 network cable from the RJ45 10/100 network port on the AM3517 EVM board to a port on an ethernet network that has TCP/IP connectivity to your Momentics IDE workstation, ideally on the same IP subnet.

Step 2: Build the BSP (optional)#

Step 3: Transfer the OS image to the target using the ROM monitor#

• Baud: 115200
• Bits: 8
• Stop bits: 1
• Parity: none
• Flow control: none

Setting up the environment#

Apply power to the target board. You should see output on your terminal console, similar to the following:

Texas Instruments X-Loader 1.42
Starting X-loader on MMC
Reading boot sector

213268 Bytes Read from MMC
Starting OS Bootloader from MMC...
Starting OS Bootloader...

U-Boot 2009.08 (Dec 08 2009 - 23:00:10)

AM35xx-GP ES1.0, L3-165MHz
am3517evm board + LPDDR/NAND
I2C:   ready
DRAM:  256 MB
NAND:  512 MiB
In:    serial
Out:   serial
Err:   serial
I2C read: I/O error
HECC U20: port before = 000000FF
I2C read: I/O error
I2C read: I/O error
HECC U20: programmed CAN_STB low
I2C read: I/O error
HECC U20: port after = 000000FF
Die ID #40a600000000000001543b210601a01b
Net:   davinci_emac_initialize
Ethernet PHY: GENERIC @ 0x00
DaVinci EMAC
Hit any key to stop autoboot:  0

At this point you can load the image to the AM3517 EVM either over the network with TFTP or via an SD/MMC memory card. The U-Boot bootloader on the AM3517 EVM can then be configured to automatically boot an IFS image using the chosen technique.

SD card download#

Copy the raw OS image ifs-am3517evm.raw onto a mmcsd card, then insert the SD card in J14 MMCSD port and apply power to the target board. After U-boot is started, boot the ifs-am3517evm.raw image in the mmcsd card as follows from the AM3517EVM # prompt:

mmcinit or mmc init (depends on which version of uboot you are using)
fatload mmc 0 0x80100000 ifs-am3517evm.raw
go 80100000

At this point you should see the ROM monitor download the boot image, indicated by a series of number signs. You'll also see output similar to this when it completes downloading:

reading ifs-am3517evm.raw

1536276 bytes read
## Starting application at 0x80100000 ...
CPU0: L1 Icache: 256x64
CPU0: L1 Dcache: 256x64 WB
CPU0: L2 Dcache: 4096x64 WB
CPU0: VFP 410330c1
CPU0: 411fc087: Cortex A8 rev 7 500MHz

System page at phys:80011000 user:fc404000 kern:fc404000
Starting next program at vfe043df0
cpu_startnext: cpu0 -> fe043df0
coproc_attach(10): replacing fe065044 with fe064928
coproc_attach(11): replacing fe065044 with fe064928
Welcome to QNX Neutrino 6.4.1 on the Texas Instruments AM3517 EVM (ARMv7 Cortex-A8 core)

Now you can test the OS, simply by executing any shell builtin command or any command residing within the OS image (e.g. ls).

TFTP download#

This method requires a raw image, which is simply a binary image, with a header on the beginning, that allows the bootloader to jump to the very beginning of the image (the raw header), where it executes another jump to the first instruction of the image.

Use the setenv command to configure the following parameters: serverip gatewayip netmask bootfile ipaddr ethaddr

Once these parameters are configured, use the saveenv command to store your changes. Refer to the U-Boot documentation for more information.

After U-boot is configured, boot the ifs-am3517evm.raw image as follows from the AM3517EVM # prompt (we'll assume it's in a directory called /qnx/ exported by the TFTP server running at IP address $serverip):

tftpboot 0x80100000 /qnx/ifs-am3517evm.raw

At this point you should see the ROM monitor download the OS image, indicated by a series of number signs. You'll also see output similar to this when it completes downloading:

TFTP from server 10.42.104.16; our IP address is 10.42.104.17
Filename '/root/ifs-am3517.raw'.
Load address: 0x80100000
Loading: #################################################################
         #################################################################
         #################################################################
         #################################################################
         #################################################################
         #################################################################
         #################################################################
         ######
done
Bytes transferred = 2355312 (23f070 hex)
AM3517EVM # 

go 0x80100000

You should see output similar to the following, with the QNX Neutrino welcome message on your terminal screen:

## Starting application at 0x80100000 ...
CPU0: L1 Icache: 256x64
CPU0: L1 Dcache: 256x64 WB
CPU0: L2 Dcache: 4096x64 WB
CPU0: VFP 410330c1
CPU0: 411fc087: Cortex A8 rev 7 500MHz

System page at phys:80011000 user:fc404000 kern:fc404000
Starting next program at vfe043df0
cpu_startnext: cpu0 -> fe043df0
coproc_attach(10): replacing fe065044 with fe064928
coproc_attach(11): replacing fe065044 with fe064928
Welcome to QNX Neutrino 6.4.1 on the Texas Instruments AM3517 EVM (ARMv7 Cortex-A8 core)

Getting U-Boot to Automatically Boot Your Image#

Read the U-Boot documentation for full details on loading and starting images but the basic technique is to put the above commands into the bootcmd environment variable. It's generally a good idea to save the previous bootcmd value should you need to use it again. The following commands do this:

setenv defbootcmd $bootcmd
setenv qnxsdboot 'mmcinit; fatload mmc 0 0x80100000 ifs-am3517evm.raw; go 80100000'
setenv qnxtftpboot 'tftpboot 0x80100000 /qnx/ifs-am3517evm.raw;  go 80100000'
setenv bootcmd run qnxsdboot
saveenv

Change the mmcinit to mmc init if required by your U-Boot version. This will setup three environment variables for booting:

• defbootcmd is the original AM3517 EVM boot command intended to boot Linux.
• qnxsdboot will boot an ifs-am3517evm.raw image from an SD card.
• qnxtftpboot will boot an /qnx/ifs-am3517evm.raw image over the network using TFTP.

Flashing the IPL on to the target#

Step A: Create the IPL image#

Run the mkflashimage script, inside the /images directory of the BSP. The output file from this script is a binary IPL image called ipl-am3517evm.bin and nand-ipl-am3517evm.bin.

The ipl-am3517evm.bin file is used to place a temporary IPL into the board's memory and will not be used in these instructions. For more details on installing the IPL without u-boot, see the release notes for the OMAP3530 Beagle Board.

The NAND IPL imagenand-ipl-am3517evm.binwill be installed into the board's NAND flash from SD card via u-boot. This IPL is padded to 24K.

The following steps describe how to generate the ipl-am3517evm.bin and nand-ipl-am3517evm.bin files:

• generate a bin format OS image called ifs-am3517evm.raw using the am3517evm.build file
• Convert IPL NAND boot header into Binary format
• Convert IPL into Binary format
• Cat NAND boot header and ipl together
• Pad Binary IPL to 24K image, this is the image used by boot from UART
• Pad Binary IPL with Header to 24K image, this is the image to put on NAND and boot from NAND

Here is the mkflashimage script:

#!/bin/sh
# script to build a binary IPL and boot image for the TI AM3517 EVM board
set -v
# Convert IPL header into Binary format
${QNX_HOST}/usr/bin/ntoarm-objcopy --input-format=elf32-littlearm --output-format=binary ../src/hardware/ipl/boards/am3517evm/arm/le/boot_header.o ./tmp-boot-header.bin

# Convert IPL into Binary format
${QNX_HOST}/usr/bin/ntoarm-objcopy --input-format=elf32-littlearm --output-format=binary ../src/hardware/ipl/boards/am3517evm/arm/le/ipl-am3517evm ./tmp-ipl-am3517evm.bin

# Cat boot header and ipl together
cat ./tmp-boot-header.bin ./tmp-ipl-am3517evm.bin > ./tmp-header-ipl-am3517evm.bin

# Pad Binary IPL to 24K image, this is the image used by boot from UART
mkrec -s24k -ffull -r ./tmp-ipl-am3517evm.bin > ./ipl-am3517evm.bin

# Pad Binary IPL with Header to 24K image, this is the image to put on NAND and boot from NAND
mkrec -s24k -ffull -r ./tmp-header-ipl-am3517evm.bin > ./nand-ipl-am3517evm.bin

# clean up temporary files
rm -f tmp*.bin

echo "done!!!!!!!"

Step B: Install NAND IPL image and IFS#

Refer to the AM/OMAP Boot Resource Pages for options for installing the IPL to flash.

Creating a new flash partition#

• Enter the following command to start the flash filesystem driver: devf-generic -s0x10000000,8m
• Erase a section of the flash: flashctl -p/dev/fs0 -o1M -l7M -ve
• Format the new patition filesystem: flashctl -p/dev/fs0p0 -o1M -l7M -vf
• slay the devf-generic driver: slay devf-generic
• Restart the driver to mount the new partition devf-generic -s0x10000000,8M

You should now have a /fs0p1 directory which you can copy files to.

Summary of driver commands#

The following tables summarize the commands to launch the various drivers.

SD card #

## MMCSD 1
devb-mmcsd-am3517 cam quiet blk cache=2m mmcsd ioport=0x4809C000,ioport=0x48056000,irq=83,dma=30,dma=61,dma=62

## MMCSD 2
devb-mmcsd-am3517 cam quiet blk cache=2m mmcsd ioport=0x480b4000,ioport=0x48056000,irq=86,dma=23,dma=47,dma=48

Graphics#

Command:

io-display  -dvid=0,did=0

Ethernet#

Command:

io-pkt-v4 -dam35xx
waitfor /dev/socket
ifconfig am0 xx.xx.xx.xx
# or
dhcp.client

USB OTG Host Controller driver#

Command:

io-usb -dam3517-mg ioport=0x5c040400,irq=71 -dehci-omap3 ioport=0x48064800,irq=77,verbose=5

Note:

1. Min A to min B usb cable is required.

2. Connect to the micro usb adapter.

3. Start io-usb with the stock options from the bsp build file.

SGX Graphics Accelerator driver#

pvrsrvd

Note:

1. io-display must be run first

2. The Composition_Manager patch:patch-641-1672-CompositionMgr.tar need be install first.

• You can get the composition manager patch : patch-641-1672-CompositionMgr.tgz here.
• To install the patch-641-1672-CompositionMgr.tgz in the AM3517 board BSP's prebuilt directory:

 
    # cd am3517_workdir
    # tar -xvzf patch-641-1672-CompositionMgr.tgz
    # cd patches/641-1672/target/qnx6
    # cp -r armle ../../../../prebuilt/
    # cd am3517_workdir
    # make clean all

3. For the detailed documents about the composition_manager and SGX Graphics Accelerator, you can refer to

• composition_manager release notes
• SGX release notes

General Notes#

1. The ethernet driver generates two warnings in the kernel logs. These are normal warnings and can be ignored.
   

• Unable to attach to pci server: No such file or directory
• Using pseudo random generator. See "random" option

Known issues for this BSP#

1. Only the mainboard USB host port is supported, and can only be controlled by the EHCI controller. Due to a SoC limitation, the OHCI controller cannot be used as a companion controller on this port. As a result, a high speed hub must be used to connect full/low speed devices.
2. The host port on on the Application Board is not yet supported.
3. Some SD cards are not detected properly in the MMC2 interface of the application board (ref #75227).
4. A log error is issued from the mentor graphics USB driver saying "Unknown option irq=71". This is a bogus error and can be ignored (the IRQ is working properly). (ref #75292)
5. USB-OTG: Some SanDisk Cruzer devices do not operate reliably on the OTG interface (ref #76047).
6. USB-OTG: A D-Link DUB E-100 USB to Ethernet adapter did not operate reliably on the OTG interface (ref #76107). Use the EHCI interface when possible.
7. Ethernet: Very rarely the ethernet driver fails to discover the PHY. sloginfo will show "PHY not found" (ref #76310). The only workaround at this time is to slay and re-start the driver.
8. CAN: CAN driver dev-can-am3517 fails to rx any transmitted msgs in a back to back connected configuration. (ref #77624)