Lpc2000

David Hawkins wrote:

>Hey Tom,
>
>  
>
>>This was the primary reason I purchased an Abatron BDI2000..
>>    
>>
>
>I'll get work to buy me an Abatron one of these days ... the
>price of the basic unit from Ultimate Solutions (a US distributor)
>is about $2800 (BDI2000 & bdiGBD PPC4x + P/s and cable kit).
>Then to add bdiGDB for other PPC models, ARM, Coldfire etc is
>$1000 per processor.
>
>I was wondering if this is the route you went to get support
>for multiple processors, or whether the BDI2000 allows you
>to write your own interface, eg. the tradeoff being your own
>time versus $1000 to support a new processor.
>  
>
This was a big expenditure for me and one that was carefully 
considered.   The primary reason  was not so much the cost as to the 
functionality.  I've used wigglers and they just can be a nasty little 
thing, sometimes you cannot figure out why they won't synchronize.  Then 
you fuss around and wiggle wires, change caps and then it starts working 
again.

The project that I'm doing (consultant) is very large, there is a lot of 
code that needs to be written and the last thing I need is to wonder if 
the dongle is any good.  The other thing is that there isn't a single 
solution to a TCP/remote: use JELIE for the XScale, ARM9 uses 
JTAGGER(?), LPC2000 use this if you change this code...  Or, get this 
guys OC something or other and use that.  Too chaotic for my tastes.

My board setup is two processors: LPC2106 and LPC2138, JTAG is daisy 
chained (TDO from one to the TDI of the other processor).  I can launch 
two instances of Insight and debug either processor.  Send a serial 
string from one processor and breakpoint reception of the string on the 
other processor.  I did not think that a dongle could debug a chain, it 
might, but the time I had to spend on other areas of the project didn't 
leave guesswork to the debug setup.

>Is there anything particularly 'special' about using a BDI
>versus a Wiggler, other than the fact that its convenient,
>debugged, and supported hardware. eg. does Abitron pay ARM etc to
>license an interface to say the trace module that somehow
>makes the BDI interface better? I've used a TI JTAG-like
>interface before and you could only purchase a unit from TI
>or a licensee since the interface was proprietry.
>
>  
>
The other thing is that I don't deal with external software to program 
the Flash of the processors.  I simply telnet into the BDI2000, type 
"s1" or "s2" to select either processor, then type "er" to erase and 
"pr" to program.  The BDI2000 uses tftp to fetch the previously defined 
binary for the respective processor.


>Most of the processors I play with as a hobby, so getting work
>to pay the extra money for adding processors is not so easy :)
>
>  
>
BTDT, I've gotten tired of a two-line LCD or an LED to debug with.  heh.

Regards,

TomW


-- 
Tom Walsh - WN3L - Embedded Systems Consultant
http://openhardware.net, http://cyberiansoftware.com
"Windows? No thanks, I have work to do..."
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