RTOS: Flash based Applicaiton program uploading issue with SCI-A and flash kernel program

Jae Yong,

There are a few ways to do this.  

One would be to modify ti/catalog/c2800/initF2837x/Boot.c to use a CODE_ALIGN pragma.  But this would require a rebuild of the Boot module itself, and offhand I don’t think there is an easy way to do this in your product installation.

A second way is to modify a linker command template in your installation.  An alignment specification could be added to the file ti/catalog/c2800/initF2837x/linkcmd.xdt:

SECTIONS {
    .text:ti_catalog_c2800_initF2837x_flashfuncs : ALIGN=0x4 LOAD = `Boot.loadSegment`,
                                              RUN = `Boot.runSegment`,
                                              table(BINIT)
}

This is probably the easiest, but if you move to later versions of the kernel or XDC tools this will be lost.

A third option involves modifying the linker command file used for your app to create a special memory region that has the alignment you want, and explicitly place the flash functions there.  For example, splitting FLASHA to add a special MYFLASH region in the linker command file:
…
      /* Flash boot address */
      BEGIN   : origin = 0x080000, length = 0x000002

       /* Flash sectors */
//  FLASHA     : origin = 0x080002, length = 0x001FFE  /* on-chip Flash */
      MYFLASH : origin = 0x080004, length = 0x000080  /* on-chip Flash */
      FLASHA     : origin = 0x080100, length = 0x001EFE  /* on-chip Flash */
…

And then in your app configuration, tell the Boot module to place the flash functions in the special region.  For example, in the .cfg file I specified “MYFLASH PAGE = 0” as the “Load Segment For Flash Functions”.  This can be done in the graphical configuration tool, or by adding this to the .cfg file:

Boot = xdc.useModule('ti.catalog.c2800.initF2837x.Boot');
Boot.bootFromFlash = true;
Boot.configureFlashController = true;
Boot.loadSegment = "MYFLASH PAGE = 0";

The Flash functions then get aligned according to the region definition:

 .ti_catalog_c2800_initF2837x_begin
*          0    00080000    00000002     
                  00080000    00000002     Boot.a28FP : Boot_asm.o28FP (.ti_catalog_c2800_initF2837x_begin)

.text:ti_catalog_c2800_initF2837x_flashfuncs
*          0    00080004    00000027     RUN ADDR = 0000b000
                  00080004    00000027     Boot.a28FP : Boot.o28FP (.text:ti_catalog_c2800_initF2837x_flashfuncs:_ti_catalog_c2800_initF2837x_Boot_initFlash)

.econst    0    00080100    00001d8f


I don’t know which of these later two sound best for your use case, but I think both will work.

Regards,
Scott