How much easier makes owning a BDI2000 things?

How much easier makes owning a BDI2000 things?

[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

Re: How much easier makes owning a BDI2000 things?

[Conn Clark]

Peter Asemann wrote:
> 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

*****************************************************************
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				clark@esteem.com
Electronic Systems Technology Inc.		www.esteem.com

Stock Ticker Symbol				ELST

Re: How much easier makes owning a BDI2000 things?

[Wolfgang Denk]

In message <4190FE1F.4080105@esteem.com> 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.).

> 	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

-- 
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Phone: (+49)-8142-66989-10 Fax: (+49)-8142-66989-80 Email: wd@denx.de
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Re: How much easier makes owning a BDI2000 things?

[Conn Clark]

Wolfgang Denk wrote:
> In message <4190FE1F.4080105@esteem.com> 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.).
> 
> 
>>	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 ;-)

> 
> 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				clark@esteem.com
Electronic Systems Technology Inc.		www.esteem.com

Stock Ticker Symbol				ELST

Re: How much easier makes owning a BDI2000 things?

[Sam Song]

Conn Clark <clark@esteem.com> wrote:
> Wolfgang Denk wrote:
[snip]
> > 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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RE: How much easier makes owning a BDI2000 things?

[VanBaren, Gerald (AGRE)]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: linuxppc-embedded-bounces@ozlabs.org=0D
> [mailto:linuxppc-embedded-bounces@ozlabs.org] On Behalf Of=0D
> Peter Asemann
> Sent: Monday, November 08, 2004 9:34 AM
> To: linuxppc-embedded@ozlabs.org
> Subject: How much easier makes owning a BDI2000 things?
>=0D
> The tutorials in the web I read about getting custom hardware=0D
> running suggest that having some BDI-thing like an Abatron=0D
> BDI2000 is a really good idea.
>=0D
> Actually I need some arguments to have such a device bought.=0D
> How much easier does it make things?
>=0D
> Peter Asemann

42 times easier.

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