I am a principal engineer that is presently tasked with developing a next generation instrument platform within my company. Since I am leaning towards using the Freescale 5474 running a Linux OS, I decided to buy the evaluator board. Needless to say, this has not been a very rewarding experience.

Problem #1: It is very confusing who exactly is responsible for the Linux build image. Freescale has instructions posted on their website for this board and Logic has theirs. Needless to say Freescale's website doesn't have a valid LTIB Linux ISO image posted (instead it plays the song “If God Permits” by Mark Daniel). Awful support from Freescale. They admit the image has a problem, but I haven't heard a peep from them since as to when they think it will fixed. Next I tried the Logic Linux image and my luck with that has been slightly better. One of the biggest problems I have encountered is that the Logic documentation on how to make this image work on the evaluator is fractured across several documents instead of one cohesive document. This lead to time being wasted chasing down known problems like "Freescale's debugger monitor doesn't play with our version of Linux" etc.

Problem #2: After solving everything else, I am still having a problem downloading compiled build images into the evaluator using TFTP in a reasonable time frame. A typical 4M image is taking 12 minutes to download over a 100-Base-T connection! After starting a packet sniffer it became obvious to me that LOSH's load command is bursting chunks of data followed by long periods of silence. What is causing this behavior? A fast connection should rip through this in a few seconds.

Problem #3: Although slow, eventually LOSH finishes its load process. Next I execute the image. A few log statements comes across on the serial port and then another period of silence begins that lasts for about 4 minutes. Once the silence ends, then it blazes through to startup. (See captured log below for details and location of quiet period). What is causing this problem?

Hopefully you can help me quickly finish this evaluation and instill some confidence in this processor (and the evaluator). So far it has been a big disappointment.

Gary Carlson



Capture log following "exec" command in LOSH:

vma_start: 0xc0000 vma_end: 0x4f8574
Copy image [0x800428:0xc3899c] to [0xc0000:0x4f8574]
Start image at 0xc0000

***4 minutes of silence occurs here****

Linux version 2.4.26 (gcarlson@nevada) (gcc version 3.4.3) #1 Mon Jan 9 12:11:49 PST 2006
starting up linux rev 0.2: startmem 0xc023e000, size 61MB
initrd: c033e000 - c05fa574
Flex CS0: ff800000 007f0001 00102180
Flex CS1: e0000000 07ff0001 00102180
Flex CS4: 40000000 0fff0001 00108580
Flex CS5: 50000000 0fff0001 00103980
On node 0 totalpages: 8192
zone(0): 1024 pages.
zone(1): 7168 pages.
zone(2): 0 pages.
Kernel command line: root=/dev/ram rootfstype=romfs
Have no hardware time clock, returning ToD as 00:00:00 on 1 Jan 1970
Calibrating delay loop... 263.78 BogoMIPS
Memory: 60008k/65536k available (1024k kernel code, 4448k data, 56k init)
kmem_create: Forcing size word alignment - mm_struct
kmem_create: Forcing size word alignment - filp
Dentry cache hash table entries: 8192 (order: 3, 65536 bytes)
Inode cache hash table entries: 4096 (order: 2, 32768 bytes)
Mount cache hash table entries: 1024 (order: 0, 8192 bytes)
kmem_create: Forcing size word alignment - bdev_cache
kmem_create: Forcing size word alignment - cdev_cache
kmem_create: Forcing size word alignment - kiobuf
Buffer cache hash table entries: 2048 (order: 0, 8192 bytes)
Page-cache hash table entries: 8192 (order: 2, 32768 bytes)
POSIX conformance testing by UNIFIX
Linux/m68k PCI BIOS32 revision 0.06
ColdFire PCI Host Bridge (Rev. 0) detected
PCI: Probing PCI hardware
layout_bus: starting bus 0
layout_bus: disable_dev for bus 0
layout_bus: starting bus 0 devices
layout_bus: bus 0 finished
Initialize Multi-channel DMA API Alpha v0.3 (2004-04-26)
Linux NET4.0 for Linux 2.4
Based upon Swansea University Computer Society NET3.039
kmem_create: Forcing size word alignment - sock
Initializing RT netlink socket
Starting kswapd
kmem_create: Forcing size word alignment - file_lock_cache
devfs: v1.12c (20020818) Richard Gooch (rgooch@atnf.csiro.au)
devfs: boot_options: 0x1
JFFS2 version 2.1. (C) 2001 Red Hat, Inc., designed by Axis Communications AB.
i2c-core.o: i2c core module version 2.6.1 (20010830)
i2c-algo-mcf.o: I2C ColdFire algorithm module is loaded.
pty: 256 Unix98 ptys configured
ColdFire internal UART serial driver version 1.00
ttyS0 at 0xe0008600 (irq = 99) is a builtin ColdFire UART
ttyS1 at 0xe0008700 (irq = 98) is a builtin ColdFire UART
tracek: ring buffer size: 64K
kmem_create: Forcing size word alignment - blkdev_requests
FireEgine CompactFlash IDE driver
Flex CS4: 40000000 0fff0001 00108580
Flex CS5: 50000000 0fff0001 00103980
fire_engine_cpld_init:98 hw revision 58
fire_engine_cpld_init:110 cpld_programmed 0
cfide_init:554 present 0
RAMDISK driver initialized: 16 RAM disks of 8192K size 1024 blocksize
loop: loaded (max 8 devices)
IPsec over IPv4 tunneling driver
PPP generic driver version 2.4.2
MCF547x/8x DSPI device driver installed
Coldfire DSPI driver is loaded
Flex CS0: ff800000 003f0001 00102180
cfi_cmdset_0001: Erase suspend on write enabled
Using word write method
Creating 2 MTD partitions on "FireEngine BootFlash":
0x00000000-0x000c0000 : "LoLo"
0x000c0000-0x00400000 : "flash-boot"
Initializing Cryptographic API
NET4: Linux TCP/IP 1.0 for NET4.0
IP Protocols: ICMP, UDP, TCP, IGMP
kmem_create: Forcing size word alignment - ip_dst_cache
IP: routing cache hash table of 1024 buckets, 8Kbytes
TCP: Hash tables configured (established 8192 bind 16384)
ip_conntrack version 2.1 (512 buckets, 4096 max) - 148 bytes per conntrack
ip_tables: (C) 2000-2002 Netfilter core team
arp_tables: (C) 2002 David S. Miller
NET4: Unix domain sockets 1.0/SMP for Linux NET4.0.
RAMDISK: Compressed image found at block 0

decompressed 0256KB
decompressed 0512KB
decompressed 0768KB
decompressed 1024KB
decompressed 1280KB
decompressed 1536KB
decompressed 1792KB
decompressed 2048KB
decompressed 2304KB
decompressed 2560KB
Freeing initrd memory: 351k freed
VFS: Mounted root (romfs filesystem) readonly.
Mounted devfs on /dev
starting: hwclock
hwclock: Could not access RTC: No such file or directory
starting: proc
starting: local-fs
starting: flash-fs
starting: BASE
starting: syslogd
sourcing: load-drivers
sourcing: start-applications
starting: network-settings
Setting eth0 MAC addr to 00:08:ee:33:44:55
ColdFire internal FEC driver version 0.11
Getting eth0 IP configuration via DHCP
udhcpc (v0.9.9-pre) started
Sending discover...
Sending select for 172.16.2.145...
Lease of 172.16.2.145 obtained, lease time 691200
Setting eth1 MAC addr to 33:44:56
starting: irda
starting: ip-settings
starting: inetd
starting: hotplug
** can't synthesize input events - /proc/bus/input/devices missing
** can't synthesize pci hotplug events
starting: devfsd
devfsd v1.3.25 started for /dev
starting: boas
done
BusyBox v1.00 (2006.01.09-20:14+0000) multi-call binary