Motorola CPCI-6020 manual Firmware, PPCBug Overview, PPCBug Basics

Firmware

5

5.1PPCBug Overview

The PPCBug firmware is the layer of software just above the hardware. The firmware provides the proper initialization for the devices on the CPCI-6020 baseboard upon power-up or reset. The examples in this chapter show PPCBug as the prompt; for the CPCI-6020 baseboard the actual debugger prompt will be displayed as MCP820Bug>.

This chapter describes the basics of PPCBug and its architecture. It also describes the monitor (interactive command portion of the firmware) in detail, and describes how to use the PPCBug debugger and its special commands. A complete list of PPCBug commands appears at the end of the chapter. Chapter 8, CNFG and ENV Commands contains information about the CNFG and ENV commands (refer to Table 5-1 on page 111), system calls and other advanced user topics.

For full user information about PPCBug, refer to the PPCBug Firmware Package User’s Manual and the PPCBug Diagnostics User’s Manual, listed in Appendix A, Related Documentation.

5.2PPCBug Basics

The debug firmware, PPCBug, is a powerful evaluation and debugging tool that provides facilities for loading and executing user programs under complete operator control for system evaluation.

PPCBug provides a high degree of functionality, user friendliness, portability and ease of maintenance. Furthermore, PPCBug is portable and easy to understand because it was written in the C programming language, except where necessary to use assembler functions.

PPCBug includes commands for:

zDisplay and modification of memory

zBreakpoint and tracing capabilities

zA powerful assembler and disassembler useful for patching programs

zA self-test at power-up feature which verifies the integrity of the system

PPCBug consists of three parts:

zThe debugger or PPCBug, which refers to the command-driven, user-interactive software debugger

zThe diagnostics, which refers to the command-driven diagnostics package for the CPCI- 6020 hardware

zA user interface or debug/diagnostics monitor that accepts commands from the system console terminal

CPCI-6020 CompactPCI Single Board Computer Installation and Use (6806800A51C) 107