Release notes for the Ashling Development Tools for the Freescale MPC56x/MPC53x/MPC555 Family.

v1.1.1, 4-Nov-2005, (c) Ashling Microsystems Limited.

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*** IMPORTANT INFORMATION ON SOFTWARE LICENSING ***
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Due to incompatibility issues with Windows XP SP2, Ashling have removed Software Licensing from this release. This is a temporary measure and Software Licensing will be reinstated in a subsequent release. Please note the terms and conditions of your Ashling License Agreement (as agreed during SETUP) and adhere to them.
	

*** Important Installation Information for Ashling Genia/Vitra Operation ***
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After installing this software, please ensure you turn off and on your Genia/Vitra emulator *before* running the new installed version. This ensures that your Genia/Vitra diskware software is updated to the latest version supplied with this release.

     
*** PathFinder Machine State Register (MSR) warning message ***
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This section explains the source of the PathFinder "Warning : MSR[RI] is cleared. Machine State may not be restartable." error message. You may get this message if debugging an application that uses interrupts. This section of the README discusses the source/reason for the message and outlines a workaround.

When the PowerPC processor is halted via PathFinder, the processor views this as a form of an exception. Therefore, as part of the "entering into halt mode" sequence, the SRR0 and SRR1 registers get loaded with the current value of the MSR and the current value of the PC when the halt occurred. When PathFinder wants to restart target program execution, it performs a IRET (interrupt return) instruction, which will force the processor to load the MSR and PC registers from the backups within SRR0 and SRR1. Now, if the target program is currently dealing with a standard interrupt when the halt request comes in, it means that the processor is now dealing with two exceptions (both the standard interrupt and the debug-halt-exception), and it's trying to support these with only one set of backup registers. When this condition occurs, PathFinder issues the "Warning : MSR[RI] is cleared. Machine State may not be restartable" message . This is basically telling the user that by doing a debug halt, the values within SRR0 & SRR1 were corrupted, because the processor was already dealing with an interrupt.

The workaround is to add additional code to the target application's interrupt service routine to save (on entry) and restore (on exit) the values within SRR0 & SRR1. Therefore when a debug halt comes in while the interrupt is being handled, it doesn't matter since the values within SRR0 and SRR1 are already backed up. 

For more information, please refer to section 6.2 of "Motorola MPC555 Interrupts Application Note by John Dunlop, Josef Fuchs, and Steve Mihalik, Rev. 0, 26 July 2001 (AN2109.PDF)". In addition, this PathFinder release includes an example program (TIMER) which illustrates the sequence of saving/restoring the SRRx registers to allow debugging of interrupt service routines.


*** v1.1.1 4-Nov-2005. Features of this release include:
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PathFinder at v1.1.1 and SymFinder-DWARF at v1.0.6.

PathFinder now supports display of "enum" C variables. The value is shown symbolically and numerically. You will need to reconvert your application using the new version of SymFinder (v1.0.6) supplied. If you want to disable "enum" support, use the "NOENUM" SymFinder switch.

Improved flash programming support. Now supports non-sequential files and images that span flash modules A & B.

Fixed problems with run-thru-reset (MDIO now initialised).