[Milkymist-devel] MM SoC 1.0RC1, Flickernoise 0.1 & production images for the RC2 run

[Sébastien Bourdeauducq]

Hi,

Here are all the flash images for the production of the RC2 batch:
http://www.milkymist.org/RC2_production_images.tar.bz2

They contain the latest 1.0RC1 SoC (which is merely a bugfixed 0.9) and the 
first release of Flickernoise, which is becoming usable though some features 
are still missing. Nonetheless, this release already supports (among others):
* patch rendering (same features as demo firmware)
* patch editing in the GUI
* OpenSoundControl (OSC) UDP server, based on a modified liblo
* automatic patch switching (with no delay anymore) on keyboard, MIDI, IR and 
OSC events (configurable in the GUI)
* DMX inputs and outputs to patches (configurable)
* OSC inputs in patches
* variable monitor
* DMX table (512 channels)
* DMX "spy"
* desktop wallpaper

Some features from RTEMS:
* memory card (read only) - need to find a way to generate the CRCs at a decent 
speed for writing (card is used in SD mode, need one CRC16 for each of the 4 
data lines)
* Network File System (NFS) - reading often works OK, but writing depends on 
your luck. Don't know if the crappiness comes from the NFS code or from some 
bug in the Ethernet driver, need to check on other RTEMS BSPs.
* flash partitions (read only) - currently using the MSDOS filesystem, need to 
port YAFFS (JFFS2 is hard to port cleanly from Linux, there's an eCos port but 
it sucks).
* shell running on the serial port

Flashing and testing procedure:
1. connect the Xilinx JTAG cable and apply power to the board
2. run prod-flash.sh to flash all the images that are common to all boards:
- bios.mcs
- bitstream.mcs
- bitstream-rescue.mcs
- flickernoise.mcs
- flickernoise-rescue.mcs
- splash.mcs
- splash-rescue.mcs
- standby.mcs
- userfs.mcs
Flashing all those images is very slow (21 minutes for me). The JTAG/serial 
pod (which we'll use later) should be much faster than the Xilinx cable and 
tools.
The prod-flash.sh script suppresses all the Impact output, you may want to edit 
it if you want to see the messages that are printed.
3. the MAC address is contained in the rescue BIOS. Run flash-mcs.sh with one 
of the bios-rescue-xx.mcs files as parameter (replace xx with the last two 
digits of the MAC address).
For example, the command:
./flash-mcs.sh bios-rescue-17.mcs
will set the board's MAC address to 10:E2:D5:00:00:17.
Flashing the rescue bios takes 30 seconds.
Later (with the UrJTAG software and the JTAG pod) we'll use a more automated 
and faster way to set the MAC addresses...
4. power-cycle the board
5. press the middle pushbutton, the Flickernoise desktop should appear on the 
VGA monitor in < 10s.
6. power cycle the board
7. press the middle pushbutton with the first pushbutton held at the same time, 
to boot in rescue mode. The splash screen should indicate "RESCUE MODE" at the 
bottom, and Flickernoise should then similarly start.
8. run the test program as explained in 
http://www.milkymist.org/test_tool/m1_testing_procedure.pdf

S.