How much easier makes owning a BDI2000 things?
The tutorials in the web I read about getting custom hardware running suggest that having some BDI-thing like an Abatron BDI2000 is a really good idea.
Actually I need some arguments to have such a device bought. How much easier does it make things?
Peter Asemann
Quoted 9 lines · Peter Asemann
The tutorials in the web I read about getting custom hardware running suggest that having some BDI-thing like an Abatron BDI2000 is a really good idea.
Actually I need some arguments to have such a device bought. How much easier does it make things?
Peter Asemann
Its worth it weight in gold bringing up custom boards the first time
and writing/debuging the boot rom. It allows you to change register values for esential functions such as PLL setings, memory timings and peripheral configuration. This is very handy because you can figure out the values you need before you write the boot rom software. It also allows you to reprogram flash memory in circuit. To do it without this you would need to have removable flash/roms and remove, reprogram and replace them each attempt. I would imagine doing that would get old very fast.
We haven't used ours much for debugging once things were up and
running(we have fallen back to using printk statements for debugging). Though it can be used for that and some core kernel developers do use it. (probably for debugging the printk code of the kernel ;-) )
In production we use it to program the boot rom on brand new boards. It
is also occasionaly usefull in finding faults in boards that don't want to come up.
To sum things up let me put it this way. I could theoretically bring up
a board without one. I can't imagine how much longer it would take to do so however.
-- Conn Clark
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Give a man a match and you heat him for a moment. Set him on fire and you'll heat him for life.
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Conn Clark
Engineering Stooge [email protected]
Electronic Systems Technology Inc. www.esteem.com
Stock Ticker Symbol ELST
Quoted 3 lines · In message <[email protected]> you wrote:
Its worth it weight in gold bringing up custom boards the first time
and writing/debuging the boot rom. It allows you to change register
... or when debugging the Linux kernel, device drivers and especially RTAI real-time modules (because you can really freeze the CPU state, including timers etc.).
Quoted 4 lines
We haven't used ours much for debugging once things were up and
running(we have fallen back to using printk statements for debugging). Though it can be used for that and some core kernel developers do use it. (probably for debugging the printk code of the kernel ;-) )
Seems you never had to deal with any time critical problems, then.
Best regards,
Wolfgang Denk
Signature · 5 lines
See us @ Embedded/Electronica Munich, Nov 09 - 12, Hall A.6 Booth 513 Phone: (+49)-8142-66989-10 Fax: (+49)-8142-66989-80 Email: [email protected] Name one thing windows is better than unix in? Making money for Microsoft? -- Randal L. Schwartz in <[email protected]>
Quoted 11 lines · Wolfgang Denk
Quoted 2 lines · In message <[email protected]> you wrote:
Its worth it weight in gold bringing up custom boards the first time
and writing/debuging the boot rom. It allows you to change register... or when debugging the Linux kernel, device drivers and especially RTAI real-time modules (because you can really freeze the CPU state, including timers etc.).
Quoted 6 lines
Quoted 2 lines
We haven't used ours much for debugging once things were up and
running(we have fallen back to using printk statements for debugging). Though it can be used for that and some core kernel developers do use it. (probably for debugging the printk code of the kernel ;-) )Seems you never had to deal with any time critical problems, then.
I have, however I used I/O bits and an Oscilliscope ;-)
Quoted 5 lines
Best regards,
Wolfgang Denk
Best Regards
-- Conn Clark
*****************************************************************
Give a man a match and you heat him for a moment. Set him on fire and you'll heat him for life.
*****************************************************************
Conn Clark
Engineering Stooge [email protected]
Electronic Systems Technology Inc. www.esteem.com
Stock Ticker Symbol ELST
Quoted 1 line · Conn Clark
Wolfgang Denk wrote:
[snip]
Quoted 6 lines
Quoted 3 lines
Seems you never had to deal with any time critical problems, then.
I have, however I used I/O bits and an Oscilliscope ;-)
But how about the time you solved the problem? Suppose a sudden power failure happened and the monitor port of your custom board couldn't give any output. Could you find the problem in no time like 5 - 10 minutes at most? I met this problem twice on my custom board. It took me one night to find out the problem at first under help of BDI2000 and Oscilliscope without any experience. The problem was SDRAM damage. And BDI2000 helped me make sure that 4 SDRAM chips on board were all broken. Second time, I just found out the real problem in 10 minutes or so with BDI2000. There were 2 broken of 4 parallel FLASH chips in 8-bit.
So, IMHO, for the sake of efficiency and accurateness, BDI2000 is much better than Oscilliscope, at least in time critical situation like trouble shooting.
=====
Best regards,
Sam
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