Help! Olimex CS-E9302 won't go...

Hi! I just got the CS-E9302 I ordered and I wanted to check it out. It is everything I expected it to be - lots of electronics, not much documentation - but the documentation is a little spartan even by Olimex’s standards.

The text file on the acompanying CD to says that the board comes preloaded with Redboot & a Linux 2.6 kernel. Following the instructions for Linux2.6 I fired it up, but see no reaction. Just the led marked ‘green’ and the one marked ‘led1’ light up. The LED marked ‘red’ flashes for about 1s but then goes out. And the big red PWR LED is on, of course.

But no serial communication on a known good, ‘real’ (not USB) serial port. I tried all the usual stuff - null modem, both serial ports, different power supply, etc. But so far no boot messages.

There are a a lot of jumpers and buttons on this board (I’m really curious about the one marked PORN), and I wonder if something is not set correctly. Or perhaps this one just didn’t get flashed in the early production run rush.

Is there anything that anyone can suggest?

Thanks,

– Dave

If someone could just tell me what behavior to expect from this board out of the box, I would be really grateful.

Is the statement in the text file on the CD that I should see a kernel boot on a serial port (I assume port 0) correct? What should the led’s do? What are the correct default settings for the jumpers on the board?

It seems to be a really neat board, and I really want to use it.

Thanks,

– Dave

I don’t know the E9302, but the E9301 booted Redboot (console on serial port 0), and allowed me to run Linux or NetBSD.

The PORN button is for “power on reset”, i.e. a harder reset than the normal reset.

The LEDs should toggle a bit at the beginning. There’s something wrong when the LEDs labeled RED and GREEN remain on (that’s a known bug in several EP93xx silicon revisions). The behaviour you’ve described should be fine.

Did you try different serial port speeds?

Regards,

Dominic

Dominic:
I don’t know the E9302, but the E9301 booted Redboot (console on serial port 0), and allowed me to run Linux or NetBSD.

The PORN button is for “power on reset”, i.e. a harder reset than the normal reset.

The LEDs should toggle a bit at the beginning. There’s something wrong when the LEDs labeled RED and GREEN remain on (that’s a known bug in several EP93xx silicon revisions). The behaviour you’ve described should be fine.

Did you try different serial port speeds?

Regards,

Dominic

Thanks…

Yes, I tried all sorts of port speeds. I’m pretty used to having eval/dev-type boards not behave as expected at first, and I think I know most of the basic tricks. But this has me swingin’ in the wind.

You say that the lights marked ‘red’ and ‘green’ should both be off when the system boots? I wasn’t completely clear, - red flashes & then goes off, but ‘green’ and I think ‘led0’ stay green. Should one or both be off?

– Dave

They just must not remain on at the same time for more than a few moments. If they do, the EP93xx deadlocked.

The EP93xx features so many modes of booting, you might have run into a problem with the jumper settings. You usually want the board to boot from internal ROM.

The ROM code switches the Green LED off and the RED on, searches for a valid signature on the various external memories, and switches the Green LED on. The bootloader (Redboot) then toggles the LEDs again to indicate the stage of booting it is in. The other LEDs are connected to the PHY and shouldn’t matter for booting.

Regards,

Dominic

Thanks or the information. It is the best I’ve been able to get so far. The current status seems to be that the hardware appears to be working, but Redboot or its equivalent do not seem to be behaving as advertised. This may be due to some misconfiguration, or quite possibly because the code is not present.

I would attempt to reload the system software if I knew how. I believe that I have most of the tools required on hand: an ARM-USB-OCD, a wiggler clone, both WinArm & Eclipse toolsets for ARM, etc., but both arm9 and loading a high level OS in this environment are unfamiliar to me. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

Thanks,

–Dave

Hello Dave,

You can get a current version of the OpenOCD precompiled for windows from www.yagarto.de. I’ve put the .cfg file I’m using for my CS-EP9301 board at http://mmd.ath.cx/openocd/cs_ep9301_ft2232.cfg.

Launch the OpenOCD (with -f config-file -d), and telnet to localhost port 4444. At the OpenOCD command prompt, try the following:

halt

flash_probe 0

If the flash probing fails, you’ll have to program the external bus interface first to be able to talk to the flash.

Refer to http://openfacts.berlios.de/index-en.ph … D_commands for a description of the commands offered on the OpenOCD’s telnet interface, and feel free to ask if you have further problems.

Best regards,

Dominic

Thanks! I’ll have a go at it

– dave

Where is redboot installed in Olimec EP9301 evaluation board, internal or external rom ??.

In the Flash ROM, i.e. the external one.

The internal ROM, as in internal to the EP9301 processor, is a mask ROM that only holds some very basic booting routines as described in the EP93xx user’s manual.

Regards,

Dominic