[TriLUG] Jtag & sheevaplug

Bill Farrow bill at arrowsreach.com
Thu Sep 19 10:25:28 EDT 2013


On Thu, Sep 19, 2013 at 9:35 AM, James Jones <jc.jones at tuftux.com> wrote:
> I am attempting to learn about openocd & jtag. At present I am doing this
> with a sheevaplug which has jtag built in.

I was really impressed with the Sheevaplug usb jtag.  You could
overwrite the flash, brick the device and recover it using just a usb
cable and openocd.  More devices should do this.

> I may want to progress to using an external jtag adapter. What should I
> look for in these device. Mind you anything I purchase will be economical.

These come in a variety of prices, compatibility, and speed.  You can
use a Bus Pirate (~$30) with OpenOCD to program flash devices over
jtag.  Not fast, but fast enough. Dangerous Prototypes also has a Bus
Blaster which is faster.

At the other extreme: At work I use an Abatron BDI3000 for board bring
up.  The device is network connected and can act as a GDB server to do
hardware breakpoint debugging. Unfortunately it costs around ~$1500
and only supports a single CPU arch at a time. Firmware to support
extra CPU architectures cost an additional ~$1000.

Bill


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