C/C++ IDE with G400S

[Mike]

@Gene

No RTOS or OS of any kind, just bare metal.

I am interested in hearing about your experiences with this project.

[Dave_McLaughlin]

According to the information I have on the G400S that I’ve used before, the JTAG Lines are connected to the SOM pins.

TDI 92
TDO 104
TMS 94
TCK 85
NRST 105

I guess what you mean is that you didn’t expose them on your carrier board?

[Gene]

@Gene

The JTAG pins are brought out to the pads on the G400S, it’s just that they aren’t exposed on the SOM and we didn’t expose them on the carrier board we designed several years ago. Worst case, we can build a carrier board adapter with a JTAG connector on it but then we have to hope the JTAG signals will make it through the submersible connector on our pressure housing or we will have to open the pressure housing to test new code which isn’t a great plan.

You are correct. Our “carrier board” is actually a pretty complex motherboard with slots for 6 daughter cards that interface to a variety of peripherals so we really don’t want to have to re-spin it just to add a JTAG connector.

[Gene]

After a 6 month hiatus, this task has raised its ugly head again. I know a little more about what I’m trying to do and enough has changed at GHI that I’d like to ask the question again with a slightly different take, so here goes:

Is there a way to use any of the current GHI products without TinyCLR (“bare metal”) to do native C/C++ development (including download and debug) using Visual GDB or a similar C/C++ IDE? If I have to use a hardware debug module and kluge a way to access the JTAG pins, that’s possible.

And the related question:

Is there a way to use any of my older G400 boards (Raptor, G400S, etc.) without .NETMicro (“bare metal”) to do native C/C++ development (including download and debug) using Visual GDB or a similar C/C++ IDE? If I have to use a hardware debug module and kluge a way to access the JTAG pins, that’s possible.

[RoSchmi]

Hello, did you try out if the pins pointed out by @Dave_McLaughlin are working?

[Gene]

Not yet. The goal is to develop/download/debug a bare metal C/C++ app using VisualGDB and a G400S board. The biggest unknown in my little mind right now is how do I connect VisualGDB to the target board? I think I might need just a JTAG module. If that’s correct, which one? This seems to be what Atmel/Microchip is recommending

https://www.microchip.com/DevelopmentTools/ProductDetails/PartNO/DV164232#additional-summary

If that’s the correct module (or someone has a better suggestion) then I can figure out how to connect it to the JTAG pins on the 400S. @Dave_McLaughlin did tell me what pins. I would like to confirm with GHI that those are the pins since the 400S data sheet doesn’t seem to have that same information.

Thanks for all the help, it is getting me closer to the right answer.

[RoSchmi]

Just out of curiousity; Segger J-Link EDU connects using the recommended pins.

[Gene]

@RoSchmi - This is a huge help. I hope you don’t mind a bunch more, hopefully easy, questions.

Are you telling me that you connected a Segger J-Link EDU to the G400S pins @Dave_McLaughlin recommended and you’re up and running for native C/C++ develoment on a G400S?

Is the SEGGER J-Link GDB Server window that you are showing part of some IDE? If so which one?

Given that VisualGDB supports various Segger JTAG modules, is there some reasonable probability I can buy a Segger J-Link EDU (or similar Segger product) and be up and developing native C/C++ apps on the G400S?

Will I need to install the SAM-BA software on the G400S?

Many, many thanks.

[RoSchmi]

I saw your post and was interested if this would work.
So I connected the JTAG pins posted by Dave to my Segger J-Link EDU. It could read from the Raptor using the JLinkGDBServer. This is only a tool, not part of an IDE as far as I know.
I’m not up and running C development on the Raptor. Perhaps I would if you would show a way. I yet don’t know nothing about developing in C/C++ for the G400. I hope that perhaps I will learn something from you. Seems to be interesting.
Kind regards

[Gene]

@RoSchmi - That’s great. Thanks again for all your help.

[Dave_McLaughlin]

Gene, I’ve not used the J-Link with the G400 but I have used it with the ESP32 and Visual GDB and it works well albeit a little slowly on the ESP32.

The EDU version is not permitted to be used for commercial projects but there are other JTAG debuggers that should work with Visual GDB. A look through the configuration files should point you to something that works.