Name

Setup — Preparing the Broadcom BCM943364WCD1 for eCos Development

Overview

Given the limited available RAM memory, it is expected that the most common development method is to use JTAG for development, either by loading smaller applications into the on-chip SRAM, or by programming larger applications directly into on-chip Flash. In the first case, eCos applications should be configured for the SRAM startup type, and in the second case for ROM startup type.

Nevertheless, it is still possible to program a GDB stub ROM image into on-chip Flash and download and debug via a serial UART, if pins for the UART are available. In that case, eCos applications are configured for RAM startup and then downloaded and run on the board via the debugger arm-eabi-gdb, or via the Eclipse IDE. For serial communications, all versions run with 8 bits, no parity, and 1 stop bit at 115200 baud. This rate can be changed in the eCos configuration used for building the GDB stub ROM image.

HAL startup types

The following startup types may be selected for applications:

ConfigurationDescription
SRAMStand-alone programs running from on-chip SRAM, loaded via JTAG hardware debugger
ROMStand-alone programs running from on-chip FLASH
ROMAPPStand-alone programs running from an offset into the on-chip FLASH, that are started by a separate boot loader
RAMPrograms loading via a GDB stub ROM into on-chip RAM, which rely on a debug monitor

Further details are available later in this manual.

Programming ROM images

To program ROM startup applications into Flash, including the GDB stub ROM, a JTAG debugger that understands the STM32 flash may be used, such as the OpenOCD tool. The openocd GDB server can directly program flash based applications from the GDB load command.

For example, assuming that openocd is running on the same host as GDB, and is connected to the target board the following will program the “bootup.elf” application into the on-chip flash:

$ arm-eabi-gdb install/bin/bootup.elf
GNU gdb (eCosCentric GNU tools 4.7.3g) 7.6.1
[ … GDB output elided … ]
(gdb) target remote localhost:3333
hal_reset_vsr () at path/hal_misc.c:171
(gdb) load
Loading section .rom_vectors, size 0x14 lma 0x8000000
Loading section .text, size 0x3adc lma 0x8000018
Loading section .rodata, size 0x6c0 lma 0x8003af8
Loading section .data, size 0x6dc lma 0x80041b8
Start address 0x8000018, load size 18572
Transfer rate: 14 KB/sec, 4643 bytes/write.
(gdb)

Alternatively, the openocd telnet interface can be used to manually program the flash. By default the openocd session provides a comand-line via port 4444. Consult the OpenOCD documentation for more details if a non-default openocd configuration is being used.

With a telnet connection established to the openocd any binary data can easily be written to the on-chip flash. e.g.

$ telnet localhost 4444
Trying 127.0.0.1...
Connected to localhost.
Escape character is '^]'.
Open On-Chip Debugger
> flash write_image test.bin 0x08000000
wrote 32518 bytes from file test.bin in 1.073942s (29.569 KiB/s)

To create a binary for flash programming the arm-eabi-objcopy command is used. This converts the, ELF format, linked application into a raw binary. For example:

$ arm-eabi-objcopy -O binary programname programname.bin

Rebuilding the GDB stub

Should it prove necessary to rebuild a GDB stub ROM binary, this is done most conveniently at the command line. For the bcm943364wcd1_evb platform the steps needed are:

$ mkdir gdbstub_bcm943364wcd1_evb
$ cd gdbstub_bcm943364wcd1_evb
$ ecosconfig new bcm943364wcd1_evb stubs
[ … ecosconfig output elided … ]
$ ecosconfig tree
$ make

At the end of the build, the install/bin subdirectory should contain the file gdb_module.bin. This may be programmed to the board using the above procedure.