Tool/software: Code Composer Studio
Hello all,
I've inherited a DSP project and code base from a contractor/vendor and I'm working at maintaining it and also trying to update it where/when possible. To add a wrinkle, the project is based on Telelogic (now IBM) Rhapsody v7.1.1. My vendor had a custom adapter written to adapt the Rhapsody OXF framework to TI DSP/BIOS.
We're currently using CCSv3.3 with a Blackhawk USB560M emulator/debugger. The Blackhawk drivers for CCSv3.3 are limited to 32-bit Windows. CCSv3.3 also needs admin privileges to run on a modern Windows 7 machine (compatibility mode issues???), which is not going to happen in a corporate networked environment. We've been able to get by on a standalone machine but we'd like to upgrade the setup. We also have access to CCSv5.3 on another machine that we were using for Stellaris and Tiva development. I understand that newer versions of CCS prefer newer versions of DSP/BIOS. We currently have DSP/BIOS v5.42.01.09 in our CCSv5.3 setup.
Unfortunately, it seems that the Rhapsody OXF adapter may be tied to certain features of older DSP/BIOS versions. I've tried to rebuild the libraries against newer BIOS versions but that hasn't helped. The Rhapsody library provides the actual main() function while a timain() function in the Rhapsody-generated code base starts the main task threads. Some of the features we're using in our TCF file include 1 hardware interrupt, a user init function, several timer interrupts, and a custom memory layout: on-chip RAM, off-chip flash (code), off-chip SRAM (heap space as well as code/data) , off-chip NVRAM (data), and a FPGA that is configured to appear as memory-mapped IO.
Unfortunately, due to the project's nature (defense), I won't be able to post the .tcf and .tci files.
When we first tried to transfer the setup to our lab, an error occurred while parsing/compiling the .tcf file. This turned out to be an error in the DSP/BIOS 5.31 that came with our CCS setup. I tried 5.33.06 next and it compiled but did not run. I spoke to the vendor's developer and he told me that they had used 5.32.04 and I've been using that ever since. I've tried rebuilding Rhapsody libraries but still encounter runtime issues with newer DSP/BIOS versions. Trying 5.42.01.09 also cause similar issues.
On the compiler side things are less sensitive. I've worked with v6.0 and v6.1 compilers on CCSv3.3 and both 7.4.4 and 7.4.6 work on CCSv5.3 once DSP/BIOS 5.32 was installed.
I guess my questions are: is it worth updating to a newer DSP/BIOS version for better compatibility with CCSv5.3? Are there any common snags or pitfalls I may have missed? Any BIOS changes I'm unaware of?