Ken Fuchs kfuchs@winternet.com writes:
I'm looking for a good/adequate tool for LinuxBIOS software integration/development for dual Opteron mainboards.
The American Arium has recently added AMD64 support to their ECM-50 emulator. I've heard that the ECM-50 is $11K plus $4K for AMD64 module and $1.5K for support for a total of $16.5K. I've looked for other AMD64 emulators, but didn't find any. Are there cheaper AMD64 emulators?
Something less than an in-circuit emulator may suffice. Maybe a bus analyzer that simply filters and records bus signals on the mainboard. The bus analyzed could be the processor bus, PCI bus, etc.
I'm looking for at least a POST card. Maybe a POST card with extra features.
I suppose even a processor adapter that allows processor pins to be probed with a logic analyzer might do as well.
What hardware tools (emulators, bus analyzers, POST card, etc.) would you recommend for LinuxBIOS integration/development for dual Opteron mainboards?
Primarily a serial console is used. Which can be a pain to bootstrap but after that all is fine.
There are other less expensive ways to get to the jtag pins then with an arium.
A lot of POST cards I have looked at have problems on recent boards. 5V instead of 3.3V. Or there is not a slot on a bus that does subtractive decode, so you can't get the appropriate traffic.
There are other tricks like using a logic analyzing to watch the lpc bus.
But for the most part I recommend just using a serial port and if that is not sufficient look at better alternatives.
Eric