RTOS/BEAGLEBK: Beaglebone Black platform

Hello,

I write you since it's been 5 days that I didn't receive any message from the RTOS forum. And this is not my first post that has been left unanswered (see ).

I'm using a BEAGLEBONE BLACK WHICH IS A DEMO BOARD OF YOURS, and I cannot even start to develop with it beacause the app that I made doesn't start.

The app has been generated with "pdkProjectCreate.bat AM335x bbbAM335x little uart example arm", but when I open the project the demo board selected is ICE_AM3359 [Cortex A] and the platform is "ti.platforms.evmAM3359". WHY THERE IS SUCH SETTING IF I SELECTED BEAGLEBONE BLACK??

In the other post they suggest me to buy a JTAG debugger to check what goes wrong, but before spending 100$ - 200$, I want to make sure that I'm able to make a simple app to work.

I think that the support for RTOS is very lacking (there isn't a platform file for Beaglebone Black, the GUI XGCONF doens't support AM335x, and the documentation should be revisited).

Besides, considering that I'm a newbie, I expect a much better assistance from you.

What do I have to do? I want to implement an Ethercat master with Beaglebone black, but if I cannot even start to make the first steps, should I change brand for having more assistance?

Regards,

Davide Brunelli

Davide,

Apologies for the delayed response.

I have looped in the CCS team to comment on your platform build problem. 

As you have already noticed from the examples in the Processor SDK RTOS, they have the AM3359 as the platform file. I don't know the reason as to why this platform is selected by default for the BeagleBone Black examples, but will need to look into it.

I see that you has a thread going here https://e2e.ti.com/support/arm/sitara_arm/f/791/p/667552/2456563 where Paula has answered some of your Ethercat questions. Is this reference design helpful as well? http://www.ti.com/tool/TIDEP0043

Lali

Hello, and thank you for your replies.

• Lali, regarding ethercat, I found an acontis document that compare several hardwares using diffeerent OSs (Linux, TI-RTOS, etc.), see the attachment. It gave me some more information, however we decided to make some tests to compare if our application can be done with Linux or if we have to choose TI-RTOS for jitter and time-cycle constraints. I checked the reference design and I think it's feasible, but first I had to ovecome this starting issue with Beaglebone Black.
  
  
• Sasha,concerning the problem with XGCONF, it was pointed out in this thread (see e2e.ti.com/.../666608. Basically I cannot use it for setting drivers (GPIO, I2C, UART, etc.) in case of AM335x ICs. However for the moment I'm more interested to make a simple generated app to work. 
  
  
• Regarding the fact that the platform "ti.platforms.evmAM3359" for  ICE_AM3359 [Cortex A], works with Beaglebone Black; after your message, I checked and both of the boards have the DDR3 memory, however, on the Beaglebone Black,  an AM3358 is mounted, while on ICE_AM3359 there is an AM3359.
  
  Can you confirm me that the platform file is the same for both of the demo boards, despite of the different IC?
  
  That said, if they are the same, for a newbie who doesn't know all this stuff (DDR3, AM3358/9, etc.) it would be much better to see the name of his board, without having to make any further consideration. If I'm allowed, I would suggest you to insert a specific Beaglebone Black platform file. For you it doesn't change a thing (it's a simple copy of evm_AM3359), but for users, it would help to avoid confusion.
  
  
• In this moment I'm a little busy, I'll write again in the next few days as soon as I can retry with the test.

Thank you.

Best Regards,

Davide Brunelli

Eureka!!!
I found out what was wrong.
So far my SD cards had been simply formatted as FAT32, I had copied and pasted the "MLO" and "app" files into it, but the application had never worked.
Today, I tried to use Win32DiskImager with the prebuild sdcard image. Since that moment, the procedure of copying and pasting files, exactly as I have done so far, works.
For closing the thread as resolved, I just need to know what could be the differences between an SDcard FAT 32 formatted and another SDcard FAT32 formatted that has been written at least one time with Win32DiskManager?

Thank you.