Communicate

How-To connect your Armadeus board to your development Host.

Forewords

The default connection uses a simple RS232 Null-Modem cable (with or without USB<->serial adapter).
As you will have to transfer some mega bytes of data, the Ethernet link is mandatory.
In order to use these two media with the APF target a terminal emulator (for RS232 link) and a TFTP server (for Ethernet link) have to be configured.

At this stage, you should have something looking like that (IP addresses may change):

RS232 Terminal configuration

You will need a RS232 terminal emulator to communicate with U-Boot/Linux console. You can choose between:

• Kermit
• Minicom
• GtkTerm

We suggest you to use Kermit as Terminal emulator for RS232 connection. Minicom was sadly reported to have problems when communicating with U-Boot (ZModem data transfer). If you just need a simple serial console and not to transfer data through RS232, then GTKTerm is the perfect choice ! (package gtkterm in Ubuntu)

Note: Your terminal should be configured with: 115200 bauds 8N1 parameters

TFTP server

In order to send your image files (U-Boot, Linux, rootfs or FPGA's firmware) at higher speed to your Armadeus board, you can use the Ethernet link and a TFTP server. Once the server started, the files located in the server shared directory (/tftpboot by default) will be accessible from the U-Boot/Linux TFTP clients.

TFTP server installation

• On *Ubuntu / Debian:

  [  ] $ sudo apt-get install tftpd xinetd

or use Synaptic

• On Fedora:

  [  ] $ rpm -q tftpd xinetd

• Then create the directory that will contain all the files that the server will export (you have to be root to do that):

  [  ] $ sudo mkdir /tftpboot
  [  ] $ sudo chmod 777 /tftpboot

Server configuration

• Edit or create the configuration file /etc/xinetd.d/tftp and modify/add it the following lines:

# default: off
# description: The tftp server serves files using the trivial file transfer
#       protocol.  The tftp protocol is often used to boot diskless
#       workstations, download configuration files to network-aware printers,
#       and to start the installation process for some operating systems.
service tftp
{
       socket_type             = dgram
       protocol                = udp
       wait                    = yes
       user                    = root
       server                  = /usr/sbin/in.tftpd
       server_args             = -s /tftpboot
#       disable                 = yes
}

• Restart xinetd service:

  [  ] $ sudo killall -HUP xinetd

• Put some files in /tftpboot
• To test it from U-Boot (if you already have the correct IP addresses, otherwise continue with Setup Basics here):

BIOS> tftp ${fileaddr} apf9328-linux.bin
MAC: 00:1e:ac:00:00:01
operating at 100M full duplex mode
TFTP from server 192.168.0.17; our IP address is 192.168.0.10
Filename 'apf9328-linux.bin'.
Load address: 0x8000000
Loading: #################################################################
         ######################################################
done
Bytes transferred = 1604984 (187d78 hex)
BIOS>

Links

• Kermit Homepage
• GTKTerm Homepage
• http://doc.ubuntu-fr.org/tftpd
• ' configuring RS-232 and TFTP on Windows to communicate with your board