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(spectrum digital ) xds560r or xds510 for divinci tms320dm6446?

Started by Khawar Shahzad December 3, 2008
Hi,

I will have to work on a custom board with davinci tms320dm6446
processor on it. I am a bit confused regarding the emulators which i
will have to use.

My questions are following :

1) Will i need an emulator (spectrum digital, 20 pin cti, xds510 or
xds560) for downloading my code for the processor and also for burning
the flash? I am a bit confused that are these emulators
( xds560r or xds510) for hardware/software debugging or for code
downloading?

2) First i was convinced that xds560 will be fine as it is faster(2 to
8 times, mentioned at a bdti report). But i have one problem with it,
which is that, xds560r doesn't support softwares like "SdFlash" (as
mentioned on spectrum digital website). I read a post in this group in
which it was mentioned that burning a flash using spectrum digital
software is much easier than using TI's hex utility.
SdFlash utility would be helpful for me if using TI's hex utility
usage is very difficult for burning the flash.

can anyone suggest me which emulator will be better for me?

Thanks

Regards,
Khawar Shahzad.
Hi,

Regarding your first question, you can use XDS510 USB Emulator by Spectrum Digital. I am using custom TMS320DM6446 processor (DaVinci) and I do not have any problem, but I am using it for debugging. I never download code on flash using tis emulator. So, for that I can help you.

Tnx,
Madnan

Khawar Shahzad wrote: Hi,

I will have to work on a custom board with davinci tms320dm6446
processor on it. I am a bit confused regarding the emulators which i
will have to use.

My questions are following :

1) Will i need an emulator (spectrum digital, 20 pin cti, xds510 or
xds560) for downloading my code for the processor and also for burning
the flash? I am a bit confused that are these emulators
( xds560r or xds510) for hardware/software debugging or for code
downloading?

2) First i was convinced that xds560 will be fine as it is faster(2 to
8 times, mentioned at a bdti report). But i have one problem with it,
which is that, xds560r doesn't support softwares like "SdFlash" (as
mentioned on spectrum digital website). I read a post in this group in
which it was mentioned that burning a flash using spectrum digital
software is much easier than using TI's hex utility.
SdFlash utility would be helpful for me if using TI's hex utility
usage is very difficult for burning the flash.

can anyone suggest me which emulator will be better for me?

Thanks

Regards,
Khawar Shahzad.
Khawar,

On Wed, Dec 3, 2008 at 8:14 AM, Khawar Shahzad wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I will have to work on a custom board with davinci tms320dm6446
> processor on it. I am a bit confused regarding the emulators which i
> will have to use.
>
> My questions are following :
>
> 1) Will i need an emulator (spectrum digital, 20 pin cti, xds510 or
> xds560) for downloading my code for the processor and also for burning
> the flash?


You custom board has [hopefully] a JTAG connector. If the connector is
14 pin, all you need is an xds510 or XDS560 emulator.
Either emulator can download code and debug the targets.
Flash programming is normally done by downloading a flash programming
program into one of the targets and downloading a preprocessed '.out'
file as the data. SDflash and FlashBurn are common utilities that
facilitate this.

> I am a bit confused that are these emulators
> ( xds560r or xds510) for hardware/software debugging or for code
> downloading?
>
> 2) First i was convinced that xds560 will be fine as it is faster(2 to
> 8 times, mentioned at a bdti report). But i have one problem with it,
> which is that, xds560r doesn't support softwares like "SdFlash" (as
> mentioned on spectrum digital website). I read a post in this group in
> which it was mentioned that burning a flash using spectrum digital
> software is much easier than using TI's hex utility.
> SdFlash utility would be helpful for me if using TI's hex utility
> usage is very difficult for burning the flash.


SDflash is written specifically for SD XDS510 class emulators.
The XDS560R is much faster, but I would suggest their USB XDS510
emulator since this seems to be your first "TI experience'. The 510
emulators are very mature and solid products [SD has been making 510
emulators for at least 15 years]. This will give you the flexibility
of using almost any flash programming utility that is available. The
main place that emulator speed will come into play is downloading
extremely large programs [10's of MBs] or performing 100's of single
steps.

There are some uncommon features supported by only the XDS560 class
emulators - HS-RTDX and EMU boot mode control. If you plan to use
either of these, you must use an XDS560 class emulator.

FYI - if you or any of the sw developers have any ARM experience, you
can use non-TI tools to compile and debug sw on the ARM9.

mikedunn
>
> can anyone suggest me which emulator will be better for me?
>
> Thanks
>
> Regards,
> Khawar Shahzad.

--
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