Contents|Index|Previous|Next

Installation

After connecting the power supply to the DDB board, connect the DDB board to the host computer through a serial port. An additional ethernet connection is possible for faster program downloading.

See Installation of hardware and Installation of software for further discussion of installation for the NEC V R 4300 family of processors.

Installation of hardware

See the following documentation for further discussion for installation of the hardware for the NEC VR4300 family of processors.

Connect the power supply

The DDB board has two power connectors identical to those found on PC motherboards. They are labeled P8 and P9; hook them up to the matching connectors on a PC power supply. Modern AT-style supplies have the P8 and P9 labels molded into or stamped on the proper connectors. XT-style power supplies do not always have labels on their connectors, so they are not recommended.

Serial Connection

1.
Connect the serial port:
There are two serial ports on the DDB board. The one labeled P1 is the one you want to connect to the machine. This port is identical to a standard nine-pin PC serial port. Connect it to your computer using a “null modem” or “crossover” cable.

2.
Test the serial connection:
To test the serial connection to the DDB board, run a terminal emulator such as the Unix ‘tip’ command, or Kermit on Unix computers, or Kermit, Terminal or HyperTerminal on MS-DOS and Windows 95 computers. Configure the terminal emulator to use the serial port to which the serial cable is attached, and set the baud rate to 9600. If no prompt is evident, check the cables and connectors. A breakout box may be used to determine if the cables are correct. Once a prompt appears, verify that it is set to ‘NEC010>’, the prompt for PMON, the DDB board’s ROM monitor. If it is set to something different (e.g. ‘PMON>’), set it to ‘NEC010>’ using the PMON ‘set prompt’ command. The prompt name is case sensitive, so enter it exactly as shown.

PMON>set prompt NEC010>
NEC010>

Be sure to exit the terminal emulation program before starting the GNU debugger. Only one of these programs can address the DDB board at one time.

Ethernet Connection

1.
Install a network card on the DDB board:
The DDB board has three PCI slots. Plug a network card into one of those slots. The network card must be based on the AMD “Lance” network chipset.
Currently, the DDB board does not allow a 10Base-T (Twisted Pair) connector on its network card, so coax cables must be used. This may affect the configuration of the card.
It is recommended that the DDB’s network card be connected directly to a network card in the local computer (using coax). This improves the reliability of network downloads. If the DDB is connected to the company-wide network, the board may hang or crash during downloads.

2.
Configuring the computer’s network card:
Let’s assume the DDB board’s network card is connected directly to a network card on the local computer, forming (in effect) a private network. Configure the computer’s network card so that it can talk correctly to the DDB board. Talk to the systems administrator about how to configure the computer to talk to the DDB board over ethernet. A private network between the local computer and the DDB board is strongly recommended.
The first step is to ensure that a driver has been installed for the computer’s network card.
The next step is to configure the IP address of the network card. If this card is connected in a “private network” to the DDB board, give it the address ‘192.168.1.1’. This address is one of those reserved for private networks, refer to Address Allocation for Private Internets RFC 1918.

3.
Configure the DDB network card.
Some of DDB board’s environment variables may need to be changed, depending on how the network is set up. Do this with the ‘set’ command, for example:

set etherSlot 3

Here are the variables that may need to be changed:

etherSlot
The number of the PCI slot where the network card is installed on the DDB board.

ethaddr
The ethernet address (NOT the IP address!) of the ethernet card. For example: ‘00:20:4c:01:62:32’.

The following examples assume a private network. Ask the systems administrator for the next three addresses:

netmask
The network mask, typically ‘255.255.255.00’ for a private network.

netaddr
The IP address of the DDB board. If there is a "private network" and the PC is configured to have the IP address ‘192.168.1.1’, as described above, use ‘192.168.1.2’ as the value of this variable.broadcast
Should be the same as ‘netaddr’, with the last number changed to ‘255’. For example: ‘192.168.1.255’.

After these variables have been set, use the ‘initEther’ command to reset the DDB board and initialize its network connection. These variables only have to set once because the DDB board saves them in non-volatile memory.

4.
Test the network connection:
The DDB board has a ‘ping’ command just like Unix, which can be used to perform a rudimentary test of the network connection. Assuming the configuration described above, use this command to ping the local PC:

ping 192.168.1.1

If the board seems to hang, try resetting it (using the push-button at the end of the board near the serial port). Don’t forget to use the ‘initEther’ command before trying ‘ping’ again!

5.
Run the TFTP server
If ethernet downloads are used a TFTP server must be configured. If the DDB board is connected to a private network, the TFTP server must run on the local system. If the DDB board is connected to a LAN, the TFTP server can run on any system on the LAN. TFTP is a standard service on most Unix systems and requires root access to configure. There are several freely available and proprietary TFTP server implementations available for PC’s. See the systems administrator for help configuring a TFTP server for the network.

6.
Test the TFTP downloading:
The TFTP download can be tested without GDB. First, convert a test program to S-records. The following converts the ELF binary ‘hello.xl’ to an S-record file ‘hello.srec’:

Unix:

% mips64vr4300-elf-objcopy -O srec hello.xl hello.srec
%

Now copy the file ‘hello.srec’ into a temporary directory on the computer, such as ‘/tmp’. Then enter the following command to the DDB board to load the S-record file:

(gdb) load 192.168.1.1:/tmp/hello.srec
(gdb)

MS-DOS/Windows:

C:\> objcopy -O srec hello.xl hello.srec
C:\>

Now copy the file ‘hello.srec’ into a temporary directory on the computer, such as ‘c:\tmp’. Then enter the following command to the DDB board to load the S-record file:

(gdb) load 192.168.1.1:c:/tmp/hello.srec
(gdb)

The argument to the ‘load’ command is in the form ‘<host>:<filename>’.

- The ‘<host>’ should be the IP address of the local computer; the host name can be used only if the ‘nameserver’ environment variable on the DDB board has also been set.
- The ‘<filename>’ should be the name of the S-record file, as seen by a TFTP client using the local computer as a server. Use forward slashes instead of backslashes as directory separators even if on a PC.
- The load should take several seconds; the board may need to be reset and tried again a few times. Remember to use the ‘initEther’ command if the board needs to be reset.

Installation of software

See also Installation in Getting Started with GNUPro Toolkit.