Release Notes for the AMCC PPC460EX BSP#

System requirements#

Target system#

• QNX Neutrino RTOS 6.4
• Processor: AMCC PPC460EX
• Board version: AMCC Canyonlands - EmbeddedPlanet EP460C 1.1 (DES0225)
• ROM Monitor version: U-Boot 1.3.3-00249-ga524e11 (Jun 30 2008 - 16:05:51)
• 512M DDR2 SDRAM
• 64M Spansion NOR flash (S29GL512N)
• 128M STMicroelectronics NAND flash (NAND01GW3B2B)

Host development system#

• QNX Momentics 6.4, one of the following host systems:
  • QNX Neutrino 6.4
  • Microsoft Windows Vista, XP SP2 or SP3, 2000 SP4
  • Linux Red Hat Enterprise Workstation 4 or 5, Red Hat Fedora Core 6 or 7, Ubuntu 6.0.6 LTS or 7, or SUSE 10
• Terminal emulation program (Qtalk, Momentics IDE Terminal, tip, HyperTerminal, etc.)
• RS-232 serial port
• NULL-modem serial cable (provided with the board)
• Ethernet link

Getting Started#

Starting Neutrino#

Step 1: Build the BSP
You can build a BSP OS image from the source code or the binary components contained in a BSP package. For instructions about building a BSP OS image, please refer to the chapter Working with a BSP in the Building Embedded Systems manual.

Step 2: Connect your hardware

• Connect one end of the serial cable to the first serial port UART0 of the EP460C board and the other end of the serial cable 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 the Ethernet cable to the upper RJ45 port on the EP460C board and plug in the other end of the Ethernet cable to your local network.

On your host machine, start your favorite terminal program with these settings:

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

Apply power to the target board. You should see output similar to the following:

U-Boot 1.3.3-00249-ga524e11 (Jun 30 2008 - 16:05:51)

CPU:   AMCC PowerPC 460EX Rev. A at 800 MHz (PLB=200, OPB=100, EBC=100 MHz)
       Security/Kasumi support
       Bootstrap Option H - Boot ROM Location I2C (Addr 0x52)
       Internal PCI arbiter disabled
       32 kB I-Cache 32 kB D-Cache
Board: Canyonlands - AMCC PPC460EX Evaluation Board, 2*PCIe, Rev. 16
I2C:   ready
DTT:   1 is 25 C
DRAM:  512 MB (ECC not enabled, 400 MHz, CL3)
FLASH: 64 MB
NAND:  128 MiB
PCI:   Bus Dev VenId DevId Class Int
PCIE0: link is not up.
PCIE0: initialization as root-complex failed
PCIE1: link is not up.
PCIE1: initialization as root-complex failed
Net:   ppc_4xx_eth0, ppc_4xx_eth1

Type run flash_nfs to mount root filesystem over NFS

Hit any key to stop autoboot:  0
=>

Step 3: Setup the environment

Use the printenv command to show the current settings for ipaddr, ethaddr, serverip etc. On your target, type the following, filling in the appropriate IP addresses and ifs file:

=> setenv ipaddr 192.168.1.62
=> setenv serverip 192.168.1.253
=> setenv bootfile /tftpboot/ifs-ep460c.raw
=> setenv loadaddr 0x200000
=> setenv bootcmd 'tftpboot $loadaddr $bootfile; go $loadaddr'

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

Step 4: Boot the IFS image

You can use TFTP download (the default) or serial download to transfer the image from your host to the target.

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.

After U-boot is configured, boot the ifs-ep460c.raw image as follows (we'll assume it's in a directory called /tftpboot/) from the U-boot prompt:

=> tftpboot 200000 /tftpboot/ifs-ep460c.raw

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:

Waiting for PHY auto negotiation to complete.. done
ENET Speed is 100 Mbps - FULL duplex connection (EMAC0)
Using ppc_4xx_eth0 device
TFTP from server 192.168.1.253; our IP address is 192.168.1.62
Filename '/tftpboot/ifs-ep460c.raw'.
Load address: 0x200000
Loading: #################################################################
         #################################################################
         ##################
done
Bytes transferred = 757600 (b8f60 hex)
=> 

Now, to run the image, enter:

=> go 200000

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

## Starting application at 0x00200000 ...

System page at phys:0000b000 user:0000b000 kern:0000b000
Starting next program at v00245ea4
Welcome to QNX Neutrino 6.4 on the AMCC PPC460EX Reference Board
#

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

Creating a flash partition#

1. Start the NOR flash filesystem driver by issuing the following command:

devf-generic -s0x4cc000000,64M

2. Prepare the area for the partition. Because the Linux images are in the first 22 MB of flash and U-Boot is in the last 640KB of flash, you may not want to erase them. Use the -l (length) and -o (offset) options to avoid these areas. Assuming that we want to create a 20 MB partition:

flashctl -p/dev/fs0 -o30M -l20M -ve

3. Format the partition:

flashctl -p/dev/fs0p0 -o30M -l20M -vf

4. Slay, then restart the driver:

slay devf-generic
devf-generic -s0x4cc000000,64M

In this example, you have a 20 MB flash partition starting at an offset of 30 MB from the start of flash. You should now have a /fs0p1 mount on the target to which you can copy files.

NAND flash

1. Enter the following command to start the ETFS driver:

fs-etfs-ep460c_2048 -m/fs/etfs

2. Stop the filesystem on the device, format and continue:

etfsctl -d /dev/etfs2 -s -f -c

You should now have a /fs/etfs mount on the target to which you can copy files.

Summary of driver commands#

The driver command lines below are specific to the EP460C board. See the online docs for each driver for additional command-line options and other details.

NOTE: Some of these drivers are commented out in the default buildfile. To use the drivers in the target hardware, you'll need to uncomment them in your buildfile, rebuild the image, and load the image into the board.

Serial#

devc-ser8250 -e -F -c11059200 -b115200 0x4EF600300,33 0x4EF600400,1

PCI#

pci-ppc440rb

I2C:#

i2c-ppc405 -p0x4EF600700 -i2

SPI:#

spi-master -dppc405

Ethernet#

io-pkt-v4 -dppc405-ep460c mac=xxxxxxxxxxxx,rmii -ptcpip
ifconfig en0 y.y.y.y

• io-pkt-v4
• libsocket.so
• devn-ppc405-ep460c.so (driver)
• devnp-shim.so

NOR#

devf-generic -s0x4cc000000,64M

NAND#

fs-etfs-ep460c_2048 -m /fs/etfs

USB#

io-usb -d ehci-460ex ioport=0x4bffd0400,irq=93

io-usb -d ohci-460ex ioport=0x4bffd0000,irq=94

Note: For more information about these commands, see the Neutrino Utilities Reference.

Known issues for this BSP#

• This BSP provides USB host controller drivers for the PPC460EX Open Host Controller Interface (OHCI) and Enhanced Host Controller Interface (EHCI). Both drivers are operational when started standalone. However, due to a known USB port contention problem between OHCI and EHCI on certain AMCC processors (including PPC460EX), these drivers currently cannot be used at the same time. You should, therefore, make sure to enable only one of OHCI and EHCI at a time.
• You can only use high-speed devices when EHCI is enabled. On connecting low- or full-speed devices, EHCI ceases to be operational. Workaround: Remove any USB device(s) from the port, slay io-usb and simply start it with EHCI again. EHCI should now be operational.
• In Microsoft Windows, certain programs (e.g. Norton Ghost) add directories inside double quotation marks (e.g. ...;"c:\Program Files\Norton Ghost\";...) to your PATH environment variable. This causes the Cygwin spawn() function to fail, which in turn causes cp to fail when called by ln-w. (Ref# 20046) Workaround: Modify your PATH environment variable and remove any quotation marks.
• In those instances where the the ROM monitor's MAC address is different from the one you pass in when running io-net, the host can cache the ROM monitor's address. This can result in a loss of connectivity. Workaround: If you need to specify a MAC address to io-net, we recommend that you use the same MAC address that the ROM monitor uses. This will ensure that if the host caches the ROM monitor's MAC address, you'll still be able to communicate with the target. Otherwise you might need to delete the target's arp entry on your host.