Comments on: Getting Started with the Olimex SAM7-P256

By: krish

krish — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 22:39:54 +0000

Also when people try to install the bin-utils or GCC they might encounter an error when doen “make all install” b’cos of the error due to texinfo version number in the recent ubuntu installations texinfo installations.
It can be solved by adding the patch for the binutils and GCC, which I am not sure how to do (involves recompilig and tarballing the original with the patch).
I did the other way around after the ../configure… command open the ‘configure’ script in gedit or any editor and search for the sentence starting with this term
“| egrep ‘texinfo[^0-9]”
and you will find the line
“| egrep ‘texinfo[^0-9]*([1-3][0-9]|4\.[4-9]|[5-9])’ >/dev/null 2>&1; then”
change it to,
“| egrep ‘texinfo[^0-9]*(4\.([6-9]|[1-9][0-9])|[5-9]|[1-9][0-9])’ >/dev/null 2>&1; then”
and then run the installation.

The solution can be found in this webpage,
http://sourceware.org/ml/binutils/2007-09/msg00240.html

bye.

By: krish

krish — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 00:15:58 +0000

I dont know how to add a region for .text.1 . I am totally new to this.
Anyway as you told I downgraded my binutils to 2.17 and gcc to 4.1.1 and I am seeing BLINKING LEDS!!!!!
thanks a lot for the help…
If you know how to include a .text.1 please let me know.
Anyway thanks a lot for ur help…
Bye..

By: adam

adam — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 00:22:19 +0000

Memory regions such as .text and .data are defined in the linker script. I’d guess this problem is because of a different version of GCC than the one I used originally. The GCC people are a real pain and like to change the rules and break everyone’s code with each new release.

To solve it, either define a new segment called .text.1 in the linker script (that’s the file called ram-ln.cmd) or see if you can use an older version of gcc.

By: krish

krish — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 07:29:04 +0000

Hi Adam,
Actually I was trying to use the SAM-BA GUI for atmels sam7s256 EK board. I combined your procedures for installation of binaries and tool chain with flashing the kit using SAM-BA and confused ur explanation of SAM- boot assistant with the SAM-BA gui for linux. Some say that we need to install the SAM-BA gui and use the atmel board option and it automatically works for the Olimex board. I doubt it b’cos it dint for me.
Anyway I downloaded the Sam_I_Am and was very happy to see it connect with the board in /dev/ttyUSB0.
I tried to download ur led blink program from the link you have provided. I copied the .samiamrc file to my home folder. When I run the ‘make’ I get the following error,

arm-thumb-elf-ld -v -Map blink.map -Tram-ln.cmd -o blink.elf crt.o blink.o
GNU ld (GNU Binutils) 2.18
arm-thumb-elf-ld: error: no memory region specified for loadable section `.text.1′
make: *** [blink.elf] Error 1

I have given the name arm-thumb-elf-ld for my linker so you can ignore it. I am not getting the source of the error. Actually I dont know what it means by ‘.text.1′ and where is that memory area located?
Can you explain the problem. If the LED blinking works I can be kind of sure that my board is workable in Linux environment.
Thanks a lot for your prompt reply the last time.

Krish.

By: adam

adam — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 21:16:08 +0000

Hi krish, It could be that Linux has assigned the board to a different port. Try the following command to list all available ports:

ls -1 /dev/ttyU*

Maybe try that command with the board unplugged and then again after the board is plugged in to see which new port appears.

By: krish

krish — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 18:20:28 +0000

I am using an Olimex sam7s256 board. I tried to get it up and running in linux (Ubuntu). I was able to successfully install GCC and binutils. I installed SAM-BA for linux from the atmel site. I was able to get the USB port for connection as specified in the SAM-BA manual (.dev/ttyUSB0). But when I try to use the GUI and ‘connect’ there is no response. I though that there is a connection failure, so when I presses the reset button in the board, I get a message “Failed to initialize FLASH accesses”. No matter how long I wait before pressing the reset button, I am not getting any SAM-BA window as expected.
can any you help me out in this? I did the ‘tst’ jumper set, reconnect the board for 10 s, disconnect and ‘tst’ jumper reset, reconnect before opening SAM-BA. Any help will be greatly appreciated. I am stuck. It is the same for both SAM-BA 2.9 and 2.7, 2.8.

By: adam

adam — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 02:04:34 +0000

I just tried to go through this procedure in the new Karmic Ubuntu 9.10. I had to add –disable-werror to the binutils build to make it work due to the stricter gcc compiler included with Ubuntu these days. I’ve just modified my original post to include this change, it should not affect compilation on older compilers.

By: codebot

codebot — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 06:23:49 +0000

I had to do this on my Ubuntu 08.04 box to get this to work:

add to the bottom of your .bashrc file this line:

alias sudo=”sudo env PATH=$PATH”

Otherwise the PATH variable inside the sudo command didn’t include /usr/local/arm7/bin, so when making arm-elf-gcc it was bombing out being unable to find arm-elf-ar, among other things. Perhaps there is a more elegant way to preserve environment variables than doing the alias line above, but if so I don’t know it. I read a pretty fiery debate among the Ubuntu crowd about this, with the parting shots seeming to imply that you need to do the alias above in order to inherit environment variables from the user account when running in sudo. But again perhaps I’m missing a simpler solution.

By: Praful

Praful — Mon, 12 May 2008 02:26:38 +0000

Thanks for the great step by step approach for getting started in atmel based board, i have just got hold of AT91SAM9 based board from http://www.oasistechsol.com
since this is Atmel ARM9 i guess the steps you have mentioned will also be applicable for me

-praful

By: aepytus21

aepytus21 — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 20:27:31 +0000

Thanks a lot for this tutorial — I’m working the smaller version of this Olimex board, but your instructions were invaluable in giving me a clear outline of the issues.

The “Click Here” link under “Update” is broken, tho.

By: Steve B.

Steve B. — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 22:03:52 +0000

I had given up for a while on this, I couldn’t get the precompiled binaries to work, and was having trouble compiling the gnuarm toolchain. My old windows laptop bit the dust a while back and I was on the verge of quitting windows for good at that point, so I didn’t even bother with the windows toolchains. I finally decided to sit down and give it a try again today, and it turns out I was able to get it to work by doing the whole process as root (I just did su instead of sudo).
Now I have blinking lights and I can finally get around to figuring out some stuff about this ARM, which I have put off for far too long.
Nice tutorial for sure!

By: adam

adam — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 00:30:57 +0000

You will not need to bother with the modprobe or vendor and product IDs if you are using a USB->RS232 adapter, Linux should sort it out for you as long as it is a supported adapter. Try using the lsusb command to verify that your USB device is connected. If so, it should be accessible via /dev/ttyUSB0.

The “SAM” utilities will not work on the LPC2148. They are specific to the AT91SAM range of chips. You will need to find some other utility which supports your chip.

I did a Google search and found a utility called lpc21isp which sounds like what you want. See this link:

http://pygmy.utoh.org/riscy/bootloader.html

Good luck with your project.

By: Pinky

Pinky — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 11:11:04 +0000

Hi!

We are using philips lpc2148 in school, and it’s all working fine under windows, but i want to use it in linux, ofcourse :)
The first parts of your guide are just what i’ve been loking for (great guide btw!). My problem is with “sam”.
The “sudo modprobe usbserial vendor=0×3eb product=0×6124″ command will probably be different for my board, am i right? It is connected with a usb -> com connector, at USB0.

Do you know if i could use the same numbers as you, and if not, the correct numbers for my lpc2148, or where i could find them?

Sincerely
Pinky

By: adam

adam — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 01:07:45 +0000

If you got a HEX file, I’d say that compile and link stages are probably working. Perhaps you are not correctly downloading the HEX file into the ARM. Have a look at the manual for whatever utility you are using for that.

I’ve never used Eclipse so I can’t really help there. Try reading Jim Lynch’s tutorial which walks through the process of developing for ARM in Eclipse under Windows. You can download it from the Atmel website here:

http://www.atmel.com/dyn/resources/prod_documents/atmel_tutorial_source.zip

By: Peter

Peter — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 21:19:51 +0000

Hallo,

thank you for your tutorial. I was trying to complie the files using gnu under eclipse Environement in windows, the project compiles fine and I got a hex file. But unfortunately, it did not work ! Do you have any information which you may provide about using exlipse environment for the project.

sincerely,
peter

By: adam

adam — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 12:07:15 +0000

Oops, sorry Steve, I didn’t notice your post there. Sorry for the delay in responding.

It is important to run the make install commands with root privileges. I use the sudo command for this. If that doesn’t work for you, try “sudo -s” or “su” to elevate your authority.

Another possible problem might be forgetting to set your PATH so that the binutils are available to the gcc build scripts. You can test this is set correctly by typing arm-elf-as –version. If it says “Command not found”, you probably have a PATH problem.

By: Adam Pierce » Adding a C library to the arm-gcc toolchain

Adam Pierce » Adding a C library to the arm-gcc toolchain — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 11:04:52 +0000

[...] This is an addition to my previous article Getting Started with the Olimex SAM7-P256. I want to add a C library so I can use functions like printf. [...]

By: Steve B.

Steve B. — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 23:09:52 +0000

Hi Adam– when I tried to install the gnuarm gcc compiler, I got a whole bunch of errors (looks like this has something to do with cross compiling, but I have no idea what’s going on…) I was able to install the binutils, just not the gcc… do you know what I might do to fix this?

Thanks,

Steve

By: adam

adam — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 12:16:28 +0000

Ricardo: I tried that toolchain. It builds my example code just fine. Plus it includes a C-library which might be useful when my programs get more sophisticated.

Steve: I don’t have a JTAG interface device so SAM-BA is my best option right now.

By: Steve B.

Steve B. — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 07:40:44 +0000

Excellent work!
I have one of these boards coming some time this week, and was wondering what to do about getting started with my Linux box (I knew about gnuarm, didn’t know about the SAM-BA for Linux).

Have you tried anything with the JTAG yet?