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view doc/Target-boot-control @ 681:0815661d6e3e
doc/Loadtools-performance: typo fix
author | Mychaela Falconia <falcon@freecalypso.org> |
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date | Mon, 09 Mar 2020 07:24:28 +0000 |
parents | d3e2b23ebf1d |
children | f19d12f5756f |
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There is a new feature in loadtools (fc-loadtool & friends) and rvinterf as of fc-host-tools-r12: target boot control. In a typical development environment where FC host tools run on a general-purpose PC or laptop and communicate with various Calypso targets via general-purpose serial or USB-serial ports, adapters and cables, there is generally no way for the host computer running FC host tools to directly command the Calypso target to power on and/or reboot - instead such control must be performed "out of band" by the operator pressing the PWON or RESET button on the target device; some targets may even require complex battery manipulations. However, there may be more elaborate (less casual) setups where FC host tools run on a special kind of host system which does have some means to directly control power and reset to an associated Calypso target: * The Mother has a plan to produce a special FreeCalypso UART+JTAG Adapter, or FC-UJA. This FC-UJA will be a special FT2232D adapter whose Channel A will operate in MPSSE mode, connecting to the Calypso target's JTAG and nTESTRESET signals, whereas Channel B will act as a standard UART, i.e., a ttyUSB device. This FC-UJA needs to be built as a prerequisite before embarking on the ambitious HSMBP (Handset Motherboard Prototype) project, as the special adapter will be required for working with the HSMBP in development. When FC-UJA becomes a reality, FC host tools running on a development host with this adapter will need to be given the ability to issue nTESTRESET pulses to the target through the adapter's MPSSE+GPIO channel; this nTESTRESET pulse will cause the Calypso target to deep-reset, power on and boot. * FC host tools (particularly fc-loadtool) may run on the application processor of a smartphone such as Openmoko GTA02. In such environments the AP will have special ad hoc control signals (typically GPIOs) to the modem, at the minimum controlling the modem's PWON line. OM GTA02 added an overriding control of overall power to the modem; other designs may reasonably add control of the modem's RESET line. * There may be special commercial applications in which one or more Calypso modems are subservient to a control processor that acts similarly to the AP of a smartphone, with that control processor not only communicating with its slave modems via UARTs, but also controlling their power and reset. Where does the desire for target boot control in loadtools and rvinterf come from? Consider the conventional usage model where no target boot control exists: you first run fc-loadtool or fc-iram or fc-xram or rvinterf on your target /dev/ttyXXX, then press the PWON or RESET button on the target. Now suppose that the finger-actuated button has been replaced with some magic command that can be executed on the host system to produce the same effect - now what? If the usage model stays the same, then you have to first run your fc-loadtool or fc-iram or fc-xram or rvinterf command same as before, then as it sits there waiting for the target to boot, you have to open another terminal window, get another ssh session into the system or whatever, and run the magic command that replaces the manual button press. Very cumbersome, hence the desire for a better way. Support for target boot control in FC host tools consists of a new -P option implemented in all of loadtools programs and in rvinterf, as well as a special configuration file which needs to be manually created. The working model is as follows: * There exist one or more "magic commands": a magic command is any shell command (anything that can be passed to /bin/sh -c) whose execution causes a connected Calypso target device to power on and boot. Naturally these commands will be very specific to your custom system; they are NOT part of FC host tools! * These magic commands may be long, and requiring the user to include each magic command in full on fc-loadtool, rvinterf etc invokation lines is undesirable. To save typing, we associate a short name (which you choose yourself as you see fit) with each magic command, and we have a configuration file (which you need to create) that defines the mapping. * The argument to the new -P option is the short name to be looked up in the configuration file. The configuration file needs to be created in /opt/freecalypso/bootctrl.conf; let us illustrate it with some examples. Example 1: FC-UJA ================= When FC-UJA becomes a reality, there will be a program called fc-testreset that will locate the attached FC-UJA by its USB ID, connect to FT2232D Channel A and generate the desired reset pulse on its output. The configuration in /opt/freecalypso/bootctrl.conf may look as follows: uja fc-testreset This configuration associates boot control name 'uja' with shell command fc-testreset. A developer would then run fc-loadtool like this: fc-loadtool -h fcfam -Puja /dev/ttyUSB0 if ttyUSB0 is where FC-UJA's UART channel ended up. fc-loadtool would run normally, sending beacons to /dev/ttyUSB0 and waiting for a Calypso boot ROM response, but it would also execute the fc-testreset command listed in the configuration file, and if everything is connected correctly, the resulting nTESTRESET pulse will cause the target to boot. The possibility of a single host talking to multiple Calypso targets is fully supported: if you have multiple FC-UJA adapters with different USB descriptor serial numbers programmed in their EEPROMs connected to respective Calypso targets, you could have a /opt/freecalypso/bootctrl.conf setup like this: uja1 fc-testreset -d serial1 uja2 fc-testreset -d serial2 and then run fc-loadtool accordingly: fc-loadtool -h fcfam -Puja1 /dev/ttyUSB3 fc-loadtool -h fcfam -Puja2 /dev/ttyUSB4 Example 2: Openmoko GTA02 ========================= There is a modem-power-ctrl.sh script provided in the openmoko directory of this FC host tools package; if you are going to run fc-loadtool on the application processor of your GTA02 smartphone, you should install this script in some sensible location such as /usr/local/sbin/modem-power-ctrl. Then fill in your /opt/freecalypso/bootctrl.conf file as follows: lm /usr/local/sbin/modem-power-ctrl boot The name 'lm' stands for "local modem"; you can then run fc-loadtool as follows: fc-loadtool -h fic -Plm /dev/ttySAC0 Change from the past ==================== Back in 2013 the predecessor to our current FC host tools package was just loadtools, and we had a special configuration for building our loadtools to run on the GTA02 AP. But it worked backwards relative to our current arrangement: the current sensible arrangement is that a tool like fc-loadtool run without any special options simply operates on the specified serial port without any special magic, and if special magic is desired, it needs to be requested explicitly with the new -P option; the old loadtools-on-GTA02-AP arrangement was the opposite: you needed to specify -n to get "regular" operation, otherwise the tools would automatically operate the modem power control. Now that we support many more different Calypso hardware targets than we even knew about in 2013-2014, a cleanup has been long overdue. The new arrangement as of fc-host-tools-r12 cleans up the mess in several ways: * Our FC host tools package has grown so much that making special code configurations for special environments like the AP of some particular smartphone is no longer scalable; now we just have one standard FC host tools package without platform-specific hacks. * Openmoko platform was certainly very special to us once, but it is not so special any more - now we just treat it the same as any other. Our target boot control mechanism has now been generalized from just OM GTA02 to any arbitrary platform with similar needs. * No more reversal of the standard tool paradigm: we have standard operation by default, magic on request with an option.