CCSv6 / MSP430-FET430UIF Debugger no longer stops at start of program

Hello Joshua,

What changes did you make to your project before being unable to correctly enter a debug session? Can you run TI demo code on the target without any abnormalities? Are there any similarities between the versions of CCS or types of OS on the computers that do work vs. the ones that don't?  Make sure that the WDT does not fire during the C startup code, or else you will never enter the debugger correctly.

Moving this thread to the Code Composer Studio Forum for their expertise on the matter.

Regards,
Ryan

Hello Ryan,

Thanks for your help.

I have 3 computers that I am using for development. A desktop, a ThinkPad and a Sony notebook. All running 64-bit Ubuntu 14.04.3.

All 3 used to work until recently.

When I upgraded my desktop and the Sony to Code Composer Studio Version: 6.1.1.00022 I noticed that the ThinkPad would not upgrade but kept saying "No updates were found". To keep the 3 computers at the same level I uninstalled CCS from the ThinkPad and did a new installation. This time it came up with Version: 6.1.1.00022 like the other two but I was no longer able to debug.

I tried to check out a fresh version of my source code from git but I am getting the same problem.

I tried to copy over the source folder from the desktop (where debugging is functional) to the ThinkPad  (in case something gets lost going through git) but I am still getting the same problem.

I experimented with clean installing CCS on a VirtualBox on the desktop and the ThinkPad to see if there is a USB hardware problem with the ThinkPad  but I am getting the same debug problem on both.

I did not try the demo code but I did try to exclude most of my source files and comment out the code that needs them, leaving a very minimal main() function. When I did that the problem went away. Including the code back in makes the problem come back on the ThinkPad but not on the other computers.

I am disabling the Watchdog at the beginning of main()

//============================================================
int main(void) {
//============================================================

WDTCTL = WDTPW + WDTHOLD; // Stop watchdog timer
__no_operation();
__no_operation();

At this point I do not dare doing any upgrades or changes to CCS on the 2 working computers since I am working on a critical project that does not allow downtime.

Thanks!

Josh

Josh,

The MSP430F5419A has 128 KB of flash so I don't think this is a problem. You can try changing your project to a large memory/data model and see if this fixes the issue, but I would have expected a warning or error to appear if this were the case.  Are the compilers any different on your separate systems?

Regards,
Ryan

Chester Gillon said:

I am not sure why the watchdog disabling code was removed from the start-up, and will attempt to find out if there is a way of re-enabling disabling of the watchdog during startup for those projects which require it.

// disables the watchdog between the __start() and the __crt_0init()
__attribute__ ((naked,section(".crt_0010init")))
void __gcc_disable_watchdog() {
    WDTCTL = (WDTPW + WDTHOLD);
}

When compiled with gcc_msp430_4.9.14r1_364 the watchdog is disabled once before the run time library start up executes.

When compiled with gcc_msp430_4.9.14r1_167 the __gcc_disable_watchdog function doesn't do any harm, it just means the watchdog is disabled twice in succession before the run time library start up executes.

Got the idea from CCSv6 MSP430 GCC Watchdog disable pre main, but had to adjust the numeric part of the .crt_0010init section name used since the linker script sorts the names of the .crt_* sections to control the order in which they are executed.