Release Notes for the QNX Neutrino 6.4.0 BSP for Freescale i.MX35 PDK (previously known as Stack Development System (3DS))1.0.0#

System requirements#

• QNX Neutrino RTOS 6.4.0
• Board version: i.MX35 PDK
• ARM1136 processor
• 128 MB DDR SDRAM
• 64 MB NOR flash
• 2 GB NAND flash

Host development system

• QNX Momentics 6.4.0
• Terminal emulation program (Qtalk, Momentics IDE Terminal, tip, HyperTerminal, etc.)
• RS-232 serial port or a USB-to-serial adapter, and a straight-through serial cable
• Ethernet link

System Layout#

Memory layout

The interrupt vector table can be found in the buildfile located at src/hardware/startup/boards/3dsmx35/build

Getting Started#

Starting Neutrino#

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

Copy or transfer the IFS image into your tftp server's directory.

• When compiling using the command line, the ifs image is in the images directory.
• When compiling using the IDE, the IFS image is by default at /Workspace_root_dir/bsp-freescale-3dsmx35/Images.

Step 2: Connect your hardware

1. Set up the board to 3-Stack mode. Refer to the manual for the correct default jumper settings to use for the Personality and Debug boards.
2. Connect one end of the serial cable to the CON4 (UART-DCE) serial port on the debug board.
3. Connect the other end of the serial cable to the first available serial port of your host machine (e.g. ser1 on a Neutrino host).
4. Connect an RJ-45 Ethernet cable to the J1 10/100 BaseT Ethernet RJ45 Connector on the debug board.
5. Connect the other end of the Ethernet cable to the Ethernet network where a TFTP server (which you'll use to transfer the boot image) exists.

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

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

Then, apply power to the target. You should see output similar to the following:

++... Read from 0x07ee0000-0x07f00000 at 0xa3fe0000: .
... Read from 0x07ed3000-0x07ed4000 at 0xa3fff000: .
**Warning** FLASH configuration checksum error or invalid key
Use 'fconfig -i' to [re]initialize database
PMIC ID: 0x00000010 [Rev: 1.0]
Ethernet FEC MAC address: is not set
hardware reset by POR

Clock input is 24 MHz
Booting from [NOR flash]

Ringo Chip is working in auto mode

LAN92xx Driver version 1.1
SMSC LAN9217: ID = 0x117a REV = 0x0
[Warning] FEC not connect right PHY: ID=fffffc
FEC: [ FULL_DUPLEX ] [ connected ] [ 100M bps ]:
... waiting for BOOTP information
Ethernet eth0: MAC address 00:04:9f:00:94:fa
IP: 192.168.1.202/255.255.255.0, Gateway: 192.168.1.1
Default server: 192.168.1.15

RedBoot(tm) bootstrap and debug environment [ROMRAM]
Non-certified release, version FSL 200814 - built 16:47:08, May 19 2008

Platform: Freescale (i.MX35 )  PASS 1.0 [x32 DDR]
Copyright (C) 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 Red Hat, Inc.

RAM: 0x00000000-0x07f00000, [0x00025680-0x07ed1000] available
FLASH: 0xa0000000 - 0xa4000000, 512 blocks of 0x00020000 bytes each.
RedBoot> 
# 

Step 3: Setup the environment

At the RedBoot prompt, issue the fconfig command to change the current environment.

The current configurations will be displayed; change the configuration if you want.

Run script at boot: false
Use BOOTP for network configuration: false
Gateway IP address: 192.168.1.1
Local IP address: 192.168.1.202
Local IP address mask: 255.255.255.0
Default server IP address: 192.168.1.15
Board specifics: 0
Console baud rate: 115200
Set eth0 network hardware address [MAC]: false
GDB connection port: 9000
Force console for special debug messages: false
Network debug at boot time: false

Step 4: Boot the IFS image

Once the above setup is complete, you can run the load command at the RedBoot prompt to download the image: load -r -b 0x00100000 -h 192.168.1.15 /tftpboot/ifs-3dsmx35.bin

Replace 192.168.1.15 with the IP address of your TFTP server and /tftpboot/ifs-3dsmx35.bin with the path of the image on the TFTP server.

RedBoot will display the follow message and start downloading the boot image:

Using default protocol (TFTP)

If the image is successfully loaded RedBoot will display:

Raw file loaded 0x00100000-0x000c9124, assumed entry at 0x00100000

Type run to jump to startup and boot the IFS image. You should see QNX Neutrino boot, followed by the welcome message on your terminal screen:

CPU0: Dcache: 512x32 WB
CPU0: Icache: 512x32
CPU0: VFP 410120b3
CPU0: 4117b363: arm1136 rev 3 399MHz

System page at phys:80010000 user:fc404000 kern:fc404000
Starting next program at vfe03edf0
cpu_startnext: cpu0 -> fe03edf0
coproc_attach(10): replacing fe060044 with fe05f928
coproc_attach(11): replacing fe060044 with fe05f928
Welcome to Neutrino 6.4 on the Freescale i.MX35 3DS (ARM 1136 core) Board
# 

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

Step 5: Replace the ~Redboot bootloader with a native QNX IPL and OS image in flash

At some point, you may wish to replace the ~Redboot bootloader with the native QNX IPL code. This may be desirable once you've tweaked the OS image exactly the way you want it, and you want the board to boot the image automatically, immediately on power up.

To replace the ~Redboot bootloader:

1.Modify your buildfile to generate a binary image.
2.Run the mkflashimage script, inside the images directory of the BSP. The output file from this script is a combined IPL/OS image called ipl-ifs-3dsmx35.bin. You'll download this file to the board's memory using the bootloader, and then burn the image into the board's flash.

The mkflashimage script:

• converts the format of ipl-3dsmx35 (generated in an earlier step) to binary
• pads the binary IPL to 16K
• combines the binary IPL with the binary OS image creating a file called ipl-ifs-3dsmx35.bin

Here is the mkflashimage script:

#!/bin/sh
#
# script to build a binary IPL image for Freescale i.MX35 3DS board and
# combine with the binary OS image
#

set -v
rm -f ipl-3dsmx35.bin ipl-ifs-3dsmx35.bin

# convert IPL into BINARY format
${QNX_HOST}/usr/bin/ntoarm-objcopy --input-format=elf32-littlearm --output-format=binary -R.data ../install/armle/boot/sys/ipl-3dsmx35 ipl-tmp-3dsmx35.bin

# pad BINARY IPL
mkrec -r -ffull -s16k ipl-tmp-3dsmx35.bin > ipl-3dsmx35.bin

# create a combined IPL and IFS image
cat ipl-3dsmx35.bin ifs-3dsmx35.bin > ipl-ifs-3dsmx35.bin

# clean up temporary files
rm -f *tmp*

Instead of starting the image, we'll now transfer the bootable flash image (IPL/OS) to the board. The bootloader can convert to binary format the last image it downloaded and then write it to flash.

3.Boot the board as described above, using ~Redboot to TFTP-download the ifs-3dsmx35.bin boot image.

4.If it's not already started, start the network driver as follows, substituting your own IP address for x.x.x.x:

io-pkt-v4-hc -dmx35 mac=00e02991234e -ptcpip
ifconfig en0 x.x.x.x

5.Start fs-nfs2, establishing an NFS connection to the host machine where your ipl-ifs-3dsmx35.bin image resides:

fs-nfs2 y.y.y.y:/mount_dir/nfs

6.Start the flash filesystem driver and erase the first 4MB of flash as follows (erase a larger area if the size of your combined image exceeds 4MB):

devf-generic -s0xA0000000,64M
flashctl -p/dev/fs0 -o0M -l4M -ve

7.Copy ipl-ifs-3dsmx35.bin to the flash, as follows:

dd if=/nfs/ipl-ifs-3dsmx35.bin of=/dev/fs0 bs=1k seek=0k 

When the copy is complete, you can reboot; it should now boot from the native QNX IPL. You should see output as follows:

QNX Neutrino IPL for 3DSMX35 board
Commands:
  d: download image to RAM
  f: scan flash for image
ipl>

8.Enter f or F, and the board should boot from the OS image in flash. You'll see the familiar Neutrino welcome message on your terminal screen:

Welcome to Neutrino 6.4 on the Freescale i.MX35 3DS (ARM 1136 core) Board
# 

If desired, the IPL code can be modified to eliminate the prompt and automatically boot from the flash without user intervention. To do this, modify the <main.c> file of the IPL source, located under:

$BSP_PATH/src/hardware/ipl/boards/3dsmx35/

Creating a flash partition#

2. Prepare the area for the partition. Because the ROM monitor and IPL/OS image are in the first 4MB of flash, you will not want to erase them. Use the -l (length) and -o (offset) options to avoid these areas. Assuming that the ROM monitor and IPL/OS image have a maximum size of 4 MB and we want to create a 16 MB partition:

flashctl -p/dev/fs0 -o4M -l16M -ve 

3. Format the partition:

flashctl -p/dev/fs0p0 -o4M -l16M -vf 

4. Slay, then restart the driver:

slay devf-generic
devf-generic -s0xA0000000,64M

In this example, you have a 16 MB flash partition starting at the end of the OS image (4 MB offset). You should now have a /fs0p1 mount on the target to which you can copy files.

Driver Command Summary#

The following table summarizes the commands to launch the various drivers.

Some of the 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.

Startup, USB, and Graphics have additional details:

Startup#

startup-3dsmx35 [startup-options]

Some modules aren't enabled after boot up, so you need to use command line options to startup to enable them. These options must be passed before any other startup options.

USB#

• Remove resistors R1145 and R1148 on personality board
• Add resistors R1154 and R1155 on personality board
• Short jumper J26

You will want to include class drivers, such as devb-umass in order to make use of attached USB devices.

Graphics#

The graphics driver in this BSP now contains acceleration for OpenVG rendering. The OpenVG header files and libOpenVG.so are included in this BSP. (prebuilt/usr/include/VG and prebuilt/armle/usr/lib respectively)

OpenVG applications have a dependency on libEGL.so.1. This library is part of the QNX Neutrino RTOS Core Graphics Composition Manger (Patch ID 1347) which can be found at the QNX Download Center. To run the OpenVG accelerated Flash player you will need to obtain QNX Aviage HMI Suite 2.0.0.

Known Issues for This BSP#

• 44 PIN EIDE connector on i.MX35 3DS V1.1 does not supply the correct voltage for the drive (3.3V required 1.8V observed). We tested the EIDE interface using a 40 Pin EIDE dirve, 44 Piin to 40 Pin converter cable, and an external power supply. This problem may have been resolved by Freescale on later boards.
• Although the AK4647 audio driver included in this BSP supports microphone record functionality, microphone record does not work on this board due to a hardware issue.
• The i.MX35 3DS board is populated with 2GB of NAND. Due to the log-structured design of ETFS, startup times may be more (of the order of tens of seconds) for large filesystems.
• The -c option to etfsctl does not function correctly and may cause the ETFS driver to crash. Workaround: Instead of using the -c option to resume the filesystem after an erase/format, slay and restart the driver.
• The i.MX35 3DS board design does not include battery-backup for the RTC (MC9S08), so the RTC does not retain its contents over power cycles.
• Card insertion and removal detection does not function correctly with the devb-mmcsd-3dsmx35 driver, and will be investigated for a future release.
• The resolution of the playback/capture positional information returned by the audio driver deva-ctrl-3dsmx35.so to the client is limited to the fragment size since we are unable to get the transfer count of the current DMA operation from the SDMA microcode. (Hardware limitation, no Ref# available)
• The graphics driver devg-imx35.so does not link against the graphics libraries when built in the IDE. Workaround: Modify the QNX C/C++ Project Properties of the graphics driver: in the Linker tab, under the Extra libraries category, add two entries ffb and disputil as type Dynamic. Save and rebuild the graphics driver.
• The serial driver devc-sermx1 doesn't support hardware flow control, and will be investigated for a future release. (Ref# 57988)
• The i.MX35 (ARM1136) processor doesn't support unaligned accesses in hardware. If an application (e.g. pwmopts) tries to access data that isn't aligned on a 32-bit boundary, a bus error will occur. To avoid this memory fault, you can enable the software emulation of unaligned accesses by starting procnto with the -ae option. (Ref# 71252)