5
CPCI-6020 CompactPCI Single Board Computer Installation and Use (6806800A51C)
107
Firmware
5.1
PPCBug 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
.
5.2
PPCBug 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:
z
Display and modification of memory
z
Breakpoint and tracing capabilities
z
A powerful assembler and disassembler useful for patching programs
z
A self-test at power-up feature which verifies the integrity of the system
PPCBug consists of three parts:
z
The debugger or PPCBug, which refers to the command-driven, user-interactive software
debugger
z
The diagnostics, which refers to the command-driven diagnostics package for the CPCI-
6020 hardware
z
A user interface or debug/diagnostics monitor that accepts commands from the system
console terminal
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