Ada on the RM46 launchpad

Hedley Rainnie

Other Parts Discussed in Thread: UNIFLASH, SEGGER

I just got Ada (GNAT from Adacore) running on the RM46 launchpad. This is a port of the TMS570 Ravenscar + ARMv7 to the RM46 (in Thumb state).

Quite barebones at the moment. A small example has 2 tasks one toggles 1 led and triggers an event, the other thread waits on the event and toggles the other led.

I had to spin my own board to talk JTAG to the target. The RM46 launchpad has a surface mount Ti20 connector site. I have an ARM20 JLINK clone (ebay) so an adapter needed to be fabbed (cost me ~$13 from OSH park for 3 boards). The SMD connectors are fairly pricey at $5 (x2 one for the board and one for the adapter).

Once thats done, you need openocd to talk to the JLINK and then the RM46.

Curr flashing is still done via UniFlash and the XDS110 as I have not had time to port the Flash021 code over to Linux and have it talk to the JLINK.

Anyway, its a start. Ada on the cheap for a Hercules. A safety language on a safety processor.

github.com/.../ravenscar-sfp-rm46

tnx

Hedley

over 10 years ago

Anthony F. Seely over 10 years ago

TI__Guru 68950 points

Cool... ! Thanks for this post - can't wait till I free up and can give it a spin.

On the emulator - this isn't an open source solution - but it's free with the launchpad and I think should work on linux.
There is a "GDB Agent" that you can use with the onboard emulator: processors.wiki.ti.com/.../XDS_GDB_Agent

Will GDB support debugging ADA programs from GNAT? If so might be an option for someone who's not as motivated to build the hardware.

Hedley Rainnie over 10 years ago in reply to Anthony F. Seely

Prodigy 130 points

Hi Anthony,

You can buy a ready made Ti20 <-> ARM20 adapter from Segger but its 49 eur (for 1). You still need to get the launchpad reworked for the SMD conn anyway. I bought the cited 3 boards and 10 connectors (5 * 2). Total for me was about $20 a board (with the parts factored in). I built 2 so I could debug in 2 locns w/o moving the targets.

I thought I tried that gdb server you cited. I seem to remember some issue with it and I moved on to the path I documented.

More info on the project is here:

hackaday.io/.../6178-ada-on-an-rm46-launchpad

tnx

Hedley

Martin Marcos over 9 years ago

Prodigy 60 points

Great work! I tried it out on our RM46 Launchpad and it worked. Without OpenOCD or GDB yet, I just flashed the binary with Uniflash Standalone Flash Tool from TI. Next step is to try to get it working with the GDB Agent and the Launchpad onboard JTAG emulator. If I don't succeed I am going to go with a JLINK clone as well. Is there any chance you could provide me with the PCB design for the adapter?

Just a thought, is it possible that the underlying Ada Runtime Library that is provided with the GNAT Bareboard cross compiler for ARM, is based in the GNATforLEON Open Ravenscar Kernel (ORK+)?

Thanks.

Martin.

Hedley Rainnie over 9 years ago in reply to Martin Marcos

Prodigy 130 points

Hi Martin,

I put the board up. github.com/.../bigadapter

1) Its not a pretty Eagle schem, I know more now about how to do vias in the schem :)
2) Its about $13 for 3 to OSH park (they accept .brd files from Eagle).

I had not seen any info on ORK in my travels. I do have builds up on github for sfp and full ravenscar RM46 and RM57.

Best,

H.