Please check off the following before submitting a hardware-related request to us. This may sound trivial but this simple checklist is very effective.
Check your board is turned on
Stupid, huh? Even I've done this. Flip that switch!
Check your board has adequate power
Seems pretty obvious but it is the source of much frustration. We have responded to countless tickets that are resolved by customers saying "Sorry, it was a power issue. Thanks anyway." Many boards now get their power from USB, so check that the voltage you expect to supply your micro is correct; use a multimeter and really check it. Many boards do not enumerate on the USB bus yet still take power so a voltage drop can be expected in some cases.
Check your hardware really does work as you expect
If you are using an off-the-shelf evaluation board there is an expectation that the board will work when delivered as new. If your board is your own design, have you hardware engineer deliver known-working hardware. If you are a hardware engineer, please note that CrossWorks is not a board bring-up tool, CrossWorks is a development tool. Whilst you can use CrossWorks to develop hardware drivers, we have an expectation that the CPU actually works and you have a reliable JTAG connection. Do not try to use us as additional board bring-up engineers!
Check jumper settings
Some boards need jumper settings to select power or enable the JTAG port, so check your board documentation and make sure your jumpers are set correctly.
Check board and silicon errata sheets
Some evaluation boards and all silicon comes with errata sheets. Errata sheets are there to be read, and if you don't read them you're going to get bitten. Check the microcontroller revision you are using against the known errata the manufacturer publishes. No really, go and do it.
Check you have the most recent CPU and board support packages
We regularly update packages with new versions to account for silicon errata and screw-ups we make. And to support new devices. So please, before you contact us, do the sensible thing and check you have the latest package and look at its release notes.
Check our forums
You know how the saying goes, "you're not the first, and you won't be the last..." Well, it's equally applicable here, in all probability somebody else will have stumbled through your problems. If you are the first, congratulations, I will be delighted to immortalize your problem by awarding it a prize place in one of our forums.
Check your configuration
If you have a JTAG adapter that support open-drain nTRST and nSRST, we use open drain output by default. If your target board needs push-pull on nTRST or nSRST, configure the target interface to use push-pull rather than open drain. (We may go to push-pull as the default in future; only TMS470 boards seem to have TRST pulled to ground.)
Check your board has adequate power
Didn't I say that before? Yes? Check it again.
Comments
1 comment
Years ago I was working as a contract engineer for LockHeed, an American aerospace manufacturing company. The company's engineers had designed and fabricated a complex data-logging computer, it was a CMOS computer, one of the first. It logged 1024 sensor channels. It worked great, some of the time, but inexplicably, it would stop working for periods of time. Dozens of engineers worked to find the problem. I was hired to help in that search. One of the first things I checked was the power-switch, yep it was switched on, then I opened the panel and checked the power-bus. It seems somebody had forgotten to attach the power-bus to the switch contacts. Since the computer was a CMOS system, when there was ANY "1" bits applied to any of the inputs, there was enough leakage (1970s) to enable the computer to actually function. Hah hah. It was my shortest contract job in my entire career. 15 minutes. :)) Power helps.
tron
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