TMS320C6678: Boot from SPI NOR on Eval board using only RBL

David Hague

Part Number: TMS320C6678

I have a TMDSEVM6678LE board that I have verified has a C6678 silicon version 2.0 DSP on it. I would like to boot from SPI NOR Flash using only the RBL. The reason is, the IBL takes up 128K of L2 SRAM and I need to boot my code into L2 SRAM. I can't skip over the first 128K of it either because our image is going to be too big. We need all of it.

I have a TI Field Service Rep that suggested that my 2 options are to either reprogram the CPLD (I guess to not force me to I2C) or else to get a minimal IBL that only reads the DIP switches and branches back to RBL (thus freeing up the L2 for me).

Currently if I try to load into L2, I overwrite the IBL and it crashes before starting my code. I've proven my code is okay by modifying the linker.cmd file to have it loaded into MSM and it boots there and runs fine. But we need MSM for something else so it is not a valid solution.

For either of the 2 solutions above, I need TI to provide me with an image and instructions for burning.

Thanks!

David Hague

over 8 years ago

0 Yordan Kovachev over 8 years ago

TI__Guru**** 161600 points

Hi,

I've notified the sw team. Their feedback will be posted here.

Best Regards,
Yordan

0 Rahul Prabhu over 8 years ago

TI__Guru** 116560 points

David,

I will direct you to the link where we provide direct boot examples :

Please refer to those examples and let us know if these instructions help you achieve direct SPI NOR boot from ROM bootloader.

Regards,

Rahul

0 David Hague over 8 years ago in reply to Rahul Prabhu

Intellectual 560 points

Rahul,

I burned the prebuilt_image (I tried both spirom_le.dat and spirom_le_swap.dat) to NOR Flash and booted. I expected to see "Hello world" on the UART and some LED blinking. I saw neither. I also went through the build instructions and burned the resulting app.dat and got the same results. I see nothing on the UART so maybe I'm not setting the DIP switches correctly? I set the DIP switches to:

SW3: off on off off

SW4: on on on on

SW5 on on off on

SW6: on on on on

Is that correct?

0 Rahul Prabhu over 8 years ago in reply to David Hague

TI__Guru** 116560 points

David,

The complete procedure to flash and run the examples and building the example is provided in the C6678 example in the docs folder. If you didin`t find it, I am attaching it here for your reference:

C6678_SPIboot_usersManual.pdf

Hope this helps.

Regards,

Rahul

0 David Hague over 8 years ago in reply to Rahul Prabhu

Intellectual 560 points

Yes, that document shows the switch settings to be exactly as I set them. The program doesn't seem to be running. Nothing on UART, and no LEDs flashing.

Not sure what to do now.

0 David Hague over 8 years ago in reply to Rahul Prabhu

Intellectual 560 points

Okay, I got it working. The problem was in the loading of the app.dat file to memory prior to burning.

0 Rahul Prabhu over 8 years ago in reply to David Hague

TI__Guru** 116560 points

David,

Thanks for confirming that you have the example working.

Regards,
Rahul

0 David Hague over 8 years ago in reply to Rahul Prabhu

Intellectual 560 points

Rahul,

Trying to use the same process to build our application, I've run into an error using b2i2c.exe. I get the "Max input array size exceeded" error. Searching through the Forum, I see lots of people have had this problem and the answer is to edit the b2i2c.c file increasing maxsize, and rebuilding. The problem is, I don't have gcc and getting it is difficult. Does anyone at TI have this exe file rebuilt for a maxsize of 0x80000?

Also, is there a way to automate the step of editing the i2crom.ccs file? We'd like to automate building and burning as much as possible.

Let me know if I need to submit a new (or separate) posts for this.

Thanks,
David

0 Rahul Prabhu over 8 years ago in reply to David Hague

TI__Guru** 116560 points

David,

I believe the max size issue was fixed in b2i2c in the Processor SDK release and the current size has been updated to 0x20000.

I have updated this to 0x80000 and provided the utility here:

btoccs.zip

For the other issue, can you try adding the following syntax when invoking romparse to create i2crom and see if this solves the issue

"romparse -rom_base 0x0 "

Regards,

Rahul

0 David Hague over 8 years ago in reply to Rahul Prabhu

Intellectual 560 points

When I run the b2i2c.exe program, I get:

0 David Hague over 8 years ago in reply to David Hague

Intellectual 560 points

When I double-click the b2i2c.exe file I get this:

Try building it as a "static" executable. Thanks!

0 David Hague over 8 years ago in reply to David Hague

Intellectual 560 points

When I double click on the b2i2c.exe file, I get:

Try building it as a "static" executable. Thanks!

0 Rahul Prabhu over 8 years ago in reply to David Hague

TI__Guru** 116560 points

David,

This is a little strange, whenever I build with cygwin compiler, it seems to autolink to the cygwin DLL so I built this using Bash shell and MinGW(.org/-w64). Please give this a try and let us know if this works.

b2i2c_MinGW.zip

Hope this works.

Regards,

Rahul

0 David Hague over 8 years ago in reply to Rahul Prabhu

Intellectual 560 points

Yes! That fixed the b2i2c problem. The b2ccs also seems to work. But romparse is crashing and the i2crom.ccs file is empty. I suspect it is a similar issue.

0 Rahul Prabhu over 8 years ago in reply to David Hague

TI__Guru** 116560 points

romparse_MinGW.zipOk, here is the romparse utility rebuilt using BAsh and MinGW.

Regards,

Rahul

0 David Hague over 8 years ago in reply to Rahul Prabhu

Intellectual 560 points

That one crashes too. Did you do anything other than rebuild it? I think you need to modify MAX_DATA_LEN_32bit. It is defined in romparse.h to 32768, but my input file has 39959 lines in it. Make it 65536 to be safe.

Thanks!

0 Rahul Prabhu over 8 years ago in reply to David Hague

TI__Guru** 116560 points

The previous binary was just a rebuild from the source that is available in the SDK.

I have updated the size as per your requirement and have provided the updated binary here:

romparse_64K_MinGW.zip

Hope this one does the trick.

this was built using the commands :

make I2C_BUS_ADDR=0x0 TARGET=c66x

0 David Hague over 8 years ago in reply to Rahul Prabhu

Intellectual 560 points

YES!!! That did it! I am now booting my image from NOR Flash using only the RBL.

Thank you so much for your patience in helping me get this working.

David

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TMS320C6678: Boot from SPI NOR on Eval board using only RBL