Seeking JTAG emulator for Atmel AT91 ARM Cores on Linux

Hi there,

We are porting a windows application from desktop into embedded Linux on 
Atmel AT91 ARM Cores, thus we need JTAG to debug the firmware under a 
Linux environment. However, SAM-ICE only connects via USB to a PC 
running Microsoft Windows2000 or XP. So I am looking for a JTAG emulator 
  running on Linux. If you have any good idea/knowledge, could you 
please help?

BTW, a friend of mine recommended YAGARTO toolchain for JTAG under 
Linux, is it the best solution so far?

Thanks.

Johnson

--- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: news@netfront.net ---

On 18 Aug, 21:29, Johnson <gpsab...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Hi there,
>
> We are porting a windows application from desktop into embedded Linux on
> Atmel AT91 ARM Cores, thus we need JTAG to debug the firmware under a
> Linux environment. However, SAM-ICE only connects via USB to a PC
> running Microsoft Windows2000 or XP. So I am looking for a JTAG emulator
> =A0 running on Linux. If you have any good idea/knowledge, could you
> please help?
>
> BTW, a friend of mine recommended YAGARTO toolchain for JTAG under
> Linux, is it the best solution so far?
>
> Thanks.
>
> Johnson
>
> --- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: n...@netfront.net ---

The excellent Rowley CrossWorks ARM tools are available for Linux, and
support several JTAG interfaces, including their own.

That sounds great. I will check into it right now.

How about Zylin Embedded CDT?  http://www.zylin.com/embeddedcdt.html

It integrates into Eclipse.

Leon wrote:
> On 18 Aug, 21:29, Johnson <gpsab...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> Hi there,
>>
>> We are porting a windows application from desktop into embedded Linux on
>> Atmel AT91 ARM Cores, thus we need JTAG to debug the firmware under a
>> Linux environment. However, SAM-ICE only connects via USB to a PC
>> running Microsoft Windows2000 or XP. So I am looking for a JTAG emulator
>>   running on Linux. If you have any good idea/knowledge, could you
>> please help?
>>
>> BTW, a friend of mine recommended YAGARTO toolchain for JTAG under
>> Linux, is it the best solution so far?
>>
>> Thanks.
>>
>> Johnson
>>
>> --- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: n...@netfront.net ---
> 
> The excellent Rowley CrossWorks ARM tools are available for Linux, and
> support several JTAG interfaces, including their own.

--- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: news@netfront.net ---

Leon wrote:
> On 18 Aug, 21:29, Johnson <gpsab...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> Hi there,
>>
>> We are porting a windows application from desktop into embedded Linux on
>> Atmel AT91 ARM Cores, thus we need JTAG to debug the firmware under a
>> Linux environment. However, SAM-ICE only connects via USB to a PC
>> running Microsoft Windows2000 or XP. So I am looking for a JTAG emulator
>>   running on Linux. If you have any good idea/knowledge, could you
>> please help?
>>
>> BTW, a friend of mine recommended YAGARTO toolchain for JTAG under
>> Linux, is it the best solution so far?
>>
>> Thanks.
>>
>> Johnson
>>
>> --- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: n...@netfront.net ---
> 
> The excellent Rowley CrossWorks ARM tools are available for Linux, and
> support several JTAG interfaces, including their own.

Please tell me more about its advantages over the free tools, then I 
might buy. Thanks.

--- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: news@netfront.net ---

On 19 Aug, 00:21, Johnson <gpsab...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Leon wrote:
> > On 18 Aug, 21:29, Johnson <gpsab...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >> Hi there,
>
> >> We are porting a windows application from desktop into embedded Linux =
on
> >> Atmel AT91 ARM Cores, thus we need JTAG to debug the firmware under a
> >> Linux environment. However, SAM-ICE only connects via USB to a PC
> >> running Microsoft Windows2000 or XP. So I am looking for a JTAG emulat=
or
> >> =A0 running on Linux. If you have any good idea/knowledge, could you
> >> please help?
>
> >> BTW, a friend of mine recommended YAGARTO toolchain for JTAG under
> >> Linux, is it the best solution so far?
>
> >> Thanks.
>
> >> Johnson
>
> >> --- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: n...@netfront.net ---
>
> > The excellent Rowley CrossWorks ARM tools are available for Linux, and
> > support several JTAG interfaces, including their own.
>
> Please tell me more about its advantages over the free tools, then I
> might buy. Thanks.
>
> --- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: n...@netfront.net ---

Excellent support, a superb IDE, their own libraries, etc. Download it
and try it.

On 2010-08-18, Johnson <gpsabove@yahoo.com> wrote:

> We are porting a windows application from desktop into embedded Linux
> on Atmel AT91 ARM Cores, thus we need JTAG to debug the firmware
> under a Linux environment. However, SAM-ICE only connects via USB to
> a PC running Microsoft Windows2000 or XP. So I am looking for a JTAG
> emulator running on Linux. If you have any good idea/knowledge, could
> you please help?

OpenOCD with a $50 FT2232 USB<->JTAG adapter worked fine with the SAM9
parts when I tried it, but I never had a need to actually use it in
anger.

  http://openocd.berlios.de/web/
  http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=8278

[I've never tried the SAM-ICE -- I don't really "do" Windows.]
  
You do know that while a JTAG adapter may be useful for
troubleshooting hardware and debugging the bootloader or Linux startup
code, it's pretty much useless for debugging applications?  For
debugging applications, you run gdb-server on the target and gdb on
your development host.

If you're using an Atmel SAM9 part, then I'd be surprised if you
really need to do hard-core debugging of a bootloader or Linux startup
code, since U-Boot and Linux are already ported and pretty much "just
work".

[I don't know as much about the SAM7 parts running Linux.]

FWIW, I did all my hardware troubleshooting and board bring-up using
the bootloader code that's in the AT91SAM9 masked ROM.  It implements
commands to read/write memory (and therefore registers), and lets you
load small test programs into SRAM and run them.

The protocol spoken by the ROM bootloader is trivial [it's documented
in the part's user's manual], and I wrote a small Python program to
send it various commands (read/write registers, etc.).

> BTW, a friend of mine recommended YAGARTO toolchain for JTAG under 
> Linux, is it the best solution so far?

Never tried it.

If money was no object, I'd go for the Zylin Z1000.

  http://www.zylin.com/zy1000.html

Abatron's BDI3000 is also nice but it doesn't talk GDB's remote
protocol directly the way the Z1000 does.  With the BDI3000 you've got
to run a daemon to translate between BDI's protocol and GDB's
protocol.

But, I couldn't really justify spending that kind of cash when the
Atmel ROM bootloader code did everything I needed to do to bring up
boards.

-- 
Grant

Johnson wrote:

> We are porting a windows application from desktop into embedded Linux on 
> Atmel AT91 ARM Cores, thus we need JTAG to debug the firmware under a 
> Linux environment. 

Why do you need JTAG to debug the firmware at all? Besides using printf for
debugging, you can use gdbserver on your platform (if you have a spare
serial port or over TCP/IP) and e.g. Insight on your development machine,
if you are not comfortable with gdb (but Insight is a bit buggy, so most of
the time I use the raw gdb command line interface, when using a debugger,
which I don't need very often).

I've used this even for Linux kernel and driver level debugging for an AT91
system, but usually debugging this level is better with GPIO test signals,
a scope and some syslogs.

-- 
Frank Buss, fb@frank-buss.de
http://www.frank-buss.de, http://www.it4-systems.de

On 19/08/2010 00:22, Johnson wrote:
> That sounds great. I will check into it right now.
>
> How about Zylin Embedded CDT? http://www.zylin.com/embeddedcdt.html
>
> It integrates into Eclipse.
>

For the debugger hardware, also look at Zylin:
<http://www.zylin.com/zy1000.html>

Disclaimer - I know this company because they are located near us.  I 
haven't used the device myself, but it certainly looks to me like it 
will do the job you need, and you can be confident that it will play 
well with Eclipse CDT, and both Linux and Windows hosts.


> Leon wrote:
>> On 18 Aug, 21:29, Johnson <gpsab...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>> Hi there,
>>>
>>> We are porting a windows application from desktop into embedded Linux on
>>> Atmel AT91 ARM Cores, thus we need JTAG to debug the firmware under a
>>> Linux environment. However, SAM-ICE only connects via USB to a PC
>>> running Microsoft Windows2000 or XP. So I am looking for a JTAG emulator
>>> running on Linux. If you have any good idea/knowledge, could you
>>> please help?
>>>
>>> BTW, a friend of mine recommended YAGARTO toolchain for JTAG under
>>> Linux, is it the best solution so far?
>>>
>>> Thanks.
>>>
>>> Johnson
>>>
>>> --- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: n...@netfront.net ---
>>
>> The excellent Rowley CrossWorks ARM tools are available for Linux, and
>> support several JTAG interfaces, including their own.
>
> --- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: news@netfront.net ---

Good point and than you for your reply.

We designed our own board, JTAG and USB ports are in the board, No 
Serial Port or Ethernet. I am going to run GDB server on the board, and 
use GDB for debugging. The USB has to be connected to a peripheral 
during the debug process, so basically only JTAG is available for 
debugging, which is the main reason that I am asking around about the 
possibility to debug the firmware with JTAG.

Do you have any idea for my trouble? Thanks a lot.



Frank Buss wrote:
> Johnson wrote:
> 
>> We are porting a windows application from desktop into embedded Linux on 
>> Atmel AT91 ARM Cores, thus we need JTAG to debug the firmware under a 
>> Linux environment. 
> 
> Why do you need JTAG to debug the firmware at all? Besides using printf for
> debugging, you can use gdbserver on your platform (if you have a spare
> serial port or over TCP/IP) and e.g. Insight on your development machine,
> if you are not comfortable with gdb (but Insight is a bit buggy, so most of
> the time I use the raw gdb command line interface, when using a debugger,
> which I don't need very often).
> 
> I've used this even for Linux kernel and driver level debugging for an AT91
> system, but usually debugging this level is better with GPIO test signals,
> a scope and some syslogs.
> 

--- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: news@netfront.net ---

On 19.8.10 8:13 , Johnson wrote:
> Good point and than you for your reply.
>
> We designed our own board, JTAG and USB ports are in the board, No
> Serial Port or Ethernet. I am going to run GDB server on the board, and
> use GDB for debugging. The USB has to be connected to a peripheral
> during the debug process, so basically only JTAG is available for
> debugging, which is the main reason that I am asking around about the
> possibility to debug the firmware with JTAG.
>
> Do you have any idea for my trouble? Thanks a lot.
>
>
>
> Frank Buss wrote:
>> Johnson wrote:
>>
>>> We are porting a windows application from desktop into embedded Linux
>>> on Atmel AT91 ARM Cores, thus we need JTAG to debug the firmware
>>> under a Linux environment.
>>
>> Why do you need JTAG to debug the firmware at all? Besides using
>> printf for
>> debugging, you can use gdbserver on your platform (if you have a spare
>> serial port or over TCP/IP) and e.g. Insight on your development machine,
>> if you are not comfortable with gdb (but Insight is a bit buggy, so
>> most of
>> the time I use the raw gdb command line interface, when using a debugger,
>> which I don't need very often).
>>
>> I've used this even for Linux kernel and driver level debugging for an
>> AT91
>> system, but usually debugging this level is better with GPIO test
>> signals,
>> a scope and some syslogs.
>>

This looks pretty much tha same situation I was in.

If you run JTAG via OpenOCD, it can serve as a GDB server,
so there is no need to have the server on target board.

I used Amontec USB dongle for JTAG and OpenOCD for ARM7TDMI (AT91R40008).

-- 

Tauno Voipio
tauno voipio (at) iki fi