EVM Setup

Table of Contents

• SK-AM62A-LP
  • Cable Connections
  • Setup UART Terminal
• Flash SOC Initialization Binary
• Additional Details
  • SOC Initialization
    • SOC Initialization Using SPL
  • BOOT MODE
    • UART BOOT MODE
    • OSPI NOR BOOT MODE
    • OSPI SERIAL NAND BOOT MODE
    • SD BOOT MODE
    • NOBOOT MODE
    • EMMC BOOT MODE
  • Troubleshooting EVM issues

SK-AM62A-LP

Note

Refer to EVM page for more details on the EVM, https://www.ti.com/tool/SK-AM62A-LP

Cable Connections

• The figure below shows some important cable connections, ports and switches.
  • Take note of the location of the "BOOTMODE" switch, this is used to switch between different boot modes like OSPI, UART, SD, NOBOOT mode

SK-AM62A-LP

Setup UART Terminal

Attention

Remove the shunt from the Jumper J10 for the MCU UART to work.

• Many examples use a standard UART terminal to log the output from the examples. You can use any UART terminal program for the same. Below steps show how to setup the UART terminal from CCS.
• First identify the UART port as enumerated on the host machine.
  • Make sure that the EVM and UART cable connected as shown in Cable Connections
  • In windows, you can use the "Device Manager" to see the detected UART ports
    • Search "Device Manager" in Windows Search Box in the Windows taskbar.
  • If dont see any USB serial ports listed in "Device Manager" under "Ports (COM & LPT)", then make sure you have installed the UART to USB driver from FTDI, https://www.ftdichip.com/FTDrivers.htm.

Identify UART Port in Windows Device Manager

• In CCS, goto "View > Terminal"

UART Terminal Menu

• Open a new UART terminal

Open New UART Terminal

• Select the UART port, keep other options to default, i.e 115200 baud rate - 8 data bits - No parity - 1 stop bit,
  • We use the 1st USB serial port, as seen in the device manager, for below in the SDK
    • Flashing application via UART
    • Booting application via UART
    • Uboot and Linux terminal
  • We use the 3rd USB serial port, as seen in the device manager, as terminal output for examples which run from DM R5F (WKUP R5F)
  • We use the 4th USB serial port, as seen in the device manager, as terminal output for examples which run from MCU R5F

Connect to UART port

• In this screenshot this happens to be COM27 and COM30. However on your machine this could be different. One tip to make sure there is no mistake in identifying the UART port is to disconnect all other UART to USB devices other than this EVM before checking in device manager.

Flash SOC Initialization Binary

Attention

This is a recommended one time step that needs to be done before you can load and run programs via CCS

If this step fails, maybe due to bad flash in EVM, then try one of the other SOC initialization steps mentioned at SOC Initialization

This step needs to be done once unless the OSPI flash has been erased or some other application has been flashed

These steps are not applicable for HS-SE devices as JTAG can not be connected to HS-SE devices by default. Follow the steps in Flash an example application for flashing the HS-SE device.

• A quick recap of steps done so far that are needed for the flashing to work
  • Make sure the UART port used for terminal is identified as mentioned in Setup UART Terminal
  • Make sure python3 is installed as mentioned in Python3
  • Make sure you have the EVM power cable and UART cable connected as shown in Cable Connections
• Build all the binaries from the mcu_plus_sdk installation path.
  • For Linux

      make -sj4 all
    

  • For Windows

      gmake -sj4 all
    

• POWER-OFF the EVM
• Set boot mode to UART BOOTMODE as shown in below image

UART BOOT MODE

• POWER-ON the EVM
• You should see character "C" getting printed on the UART terminal every 2-3 seconds as shown below

UART output in UART BOOT MODE

• Close the UART terminal as shown below. This is important, else the UART script in next step wont be able to connect to the UART port.

Close UART terminal

Note

For HS-FS device, use default_sbl_null_hs_fs.cfg as the cfg file.

• Open a command prompt and run the below command to flash the SOC initialization binary to the EVM.

    cd ${SDK_INSTALL_PATH}/tools/boot
    python uart_uniflash.py -p COM<x> --cfg=sbl_prebuilt/am62ax-sk/default_sbl_null_hs_fs.cfg
  

  • Here COM<x> is the port name of the identified UART port in Windows.
  • On Linux,
    • The name for UART port is typically something like /dev/ttyUSB0
    • On some Linux systems, one needs to use python3 to invoke python3.x, just python command may invoke python 2.x which will not work with the flashing script.
• When the flashing is in progress you will see something like below

Flash in progress

• After all the flashing is done, you will see something like below

Flashing successful

• If flashing has failed, see Flash tool error messages and solutions, and resolve the errors.
• If flashing is successful, do the next steps ...
• POWER-OFF the EVM
• Switch the EVM boot mode to OSPI NAND mode as shown below,

OSPI NAND BOOT MODE

• Re-connect the UART terminal in CCS window as shown in Setup UART Terminal
• POWER-ON the EVM
• You should see output like below on the UART terminal

    Starting NULL Bootloader ...
  
    SYSFW Version 8.6.4--v08.06.04 (Chill Capybar
    SYSFW revision 0x8
    DMSC ABI revision 3.1
  
    INFO: Bootloader_runCpu:155: CPU mcu-r5f is initialized to 800000000 Hz !!!
    INFO: Bootloader_runCpu:155: CPU a530-0 is initialized to 1250000000 Hz !!!
    INFO: Bootloader_runCpu:155: CPU a530-1 is initialized to 1250000000 Hz !!!
    INFO: Bootloader_runCpu:155: CPU a531-0 is initialized to 1250000000 Hz !!!
    INFO: Bootloader_runCpu:155: CPU a531-1 is initialized to 1250000000 Hz !!!
    INFO: Bootloader_runCpu:162: CPU c7x0-0 is initialized to 850000000 Hz !!!
    INFO: Bootloader_loadSelfCpu:208: CPU r5f0-0 is initialized to 800000000 Hz !!!
    INFO: Bootloader_JumpSelfCpu:227: All done, jumping self ...
  

• Congratulations now the EVM is setup for loading and running from CCS !!!
• You dont need to do these steps again unless you have flashed some other binary to the flash.
• Now you can build a example of interest (see Build a Hello World example) and then run it (see CCS Launch, Load and Run)

Attention

If SBL NULL is used for development, GEL files aren't required for MCU-R5FSS0-0 R5FSS0-0

Additional Details

Note

This section has more details on SK-AM62A-LP. This is mainly for reference and can be skipped unless referred to by other pages in this user guide.

SOC Initialization

Before any program can be loaded and run on the EVM, the SOC needs to be initialized. Below sections describes the various options available for SOC initialization.

SOC Initialization Using SPL

• Prepare a SD card with Linux image by following the Processor SDK Linux - Create SD card page.
• POWER-OFF the EVM
• Make sure below cables are connected as shown in Cable Connections
  • Power cable
  • JTAG cable
  • UART cable
• Set EVM in SDCARD BOOT mode as shown below
  

  SD CARD BOOT MODE
• Insert the prepared SD card on the SD card slot.
• Setup UART terminals for Uboot/Linux and the MCU R5 console as per Setup UART Terminal section.
• POWER-ON the EVM
• Uboot and Linux should come-up on the UART terminal.
• While Linux is booting, the remoteproc should start MCU R5 as shown below.

  [    9.276880] platform 79000000.r5f: configured R5F for remoteproc mode
  [    9.544692] platform 79000000.r5f: assigned reserved memory node r5f-dma-memory@9b800000
  [    9.551482] random: systemd: uninitialized urandom read (16 bytes read)
  [    9.598523] remoteproc remoteproc1: 79000000.r5f is available
  [    9.671824] remoteproc remoteproc1: powering up 79000000.r5f
  [    9.677585] remoteproc remoteproc1: Booting fw image am62a-mcu-r5f0_0-fw, size 93468
  [   10.123496] virtio_rpmsg_bus virtio1: rpmsg host is online
  [   10.124434] virtio_rpmsg_bus virtio1: creating channel ti.ipc4.ping-pong addr 0xd
  [   10.175580]  remoteproc1#vdev0buffer: registered virtio2 (type 7)
  [   10.185823] remoteproc remoteproc1: remote processor 79000000.r5f is now up
  [   10.443139] virtio_rpmsg_bus virtio2: creating channel ti.ipc4.ping-pong addr 0xd
  [   10.450979] virtio_rpmsg_bus virtio2: creating channel rpmsg_chrdev addr 0xe

• Setting up the board for Linux boot requires to be done only once with the EVM. But after every power cycle of the board, we need to wait for the linux to come up before loading binaries to AM62Ax MCU R5 through CCS.

BOOT MODE

UART BOOT MODE

This mode is used to flash files to the board flash via UART. It can also be used to boot applications via UART.

BOOTMODE [ 8 : 15 ] (SW3) = 0000 0000
BOOTMODE [ 0 :  7 ] (SW2) = 1101 1100

UART BOOT MODE

OSPI NOR BOOT MODE

This mode is used to boot flashed applications via EVM flash like OSPI NOR flash

BOOTMODE [ 8 : 15 ] (SW3) = 0100 0000
BOOTMODE [ 0 :  7 ] (SW2) = 1100 1110

OSPI BOOT MODE

OSPI SERIAL NAND BOOT MODE

This mode is used to boot flashed applications via EVM flash like OSPI Serial NAND flash

BOOTMODE [ 8 : 15 ] (SW3) = 0000 0000
BOOTMODE [ 0 :  7 ] (SW2) = 1100 0000

OSPI NAND BOOT MODE

SD BOOT MODE

This mode is used to boot applications via SD card on the EVM.

BOOTMODE [ 8 : 15 ] (SW3) = 0100 0000
BOOTMODE [ 0 :  7 ] (SW2) = 1100 0010

SD BOOT MODE

NOBOOT MODE

BOOTMODE [ 8 : 15 ] (SW3) = 0000 0000
BOOTMODE [ 0 :  7 ] (SW2) = 1101 1111

NO BOOT MODE

EMMC BOOT MODE

This mode is used to boot applications via eMMC on the EVM.

BOOTMODE [ 8 : 15 ] (SW3) = 0000 0000
BOOTMODE [ 0 :  7 ] (SW2) = 1101 0011

EMMC BOOT MODE

Troubleshooting EVM issues

• JTAG connection fails on some EVMs with the following error. Need to connect the JTAG cable after board is powered on.

JTAG Connection Error Dialog