After dancing with Google most of the afternoon and restarting VM a million times, I finally have
the Propeller tool properly identifying the Prop. But it keeps loosing the propeller during the verification
step when programming it. Did you run into this? I've started debugging this issue by reducing the
send/receive bytes, etc but haven't beaten it yet. Ideas?
For those who are following this thread.. be warned this isn't for the faint of heart yet.. [noparse]:)[/noparse]
It appears that it can be done, but it's not an out-of-the-box solution.
Took another shot at the Sun VirtualBox today, only this time using an XP iso
which had been hacked into submission. (One of those hackfoo, low memory,
low overhead, don't ask me where I got it copies)
It will now find and correctly load the Propeller from Proptool most of the time.
I'd say that you shouldn't try this unless you have a reasonably current computer
with plenty of memory. My dual 3gig Pentium 4 with 512mb ram is just
getting by. I'll try this later with a copy of Win2k when I find my copy.
Maybe we could sweetly ask Jeff to give the I/O routines a just a little more
slack in the next release of Proptool.
I think the I/O routines have already been given thier maximum "always working" slack. There are hardcoded timers in the Propeller which cannot be altered.
Here is how I do it.
(It's an x86 binary and will work on Linux 386 and x86_64)
Configure a serial port in virtualbox using a unix socket.
Port Mode : Host Pipe.
Create Pipe : Checked
Port Path : /tmp/ploader
then run up virtualbox and get windows to detect the new serial port.
fire up ./pload in a terminal window and just let it sit there. You can test it by trying to detect a propeller with PropTool.
pload pretends to be a propeller to the VM, and accepts downloads from Proptool. When the download completes it turns around and tries to download it to a propeller on /dev/ttyUSB0.
(You can change the serial port and pipe with command line options. pload -? will get you those).
Just hit enter to abort pload. You can start and stop it as many times as you like while the VM is active and it'll just keep working. It won't load unless /tmp/ploader exists and it can connect to it. (it's a unix socket).
It might look for libusb also (this also has the ability to download to my USB bootloader if it can find it.. )
if you have problems with a laptop over heating first the obvious make sure your fan and heat sink is clean .. for toshiba users be careful the fan blows in to out so the inside of the heat sinks get clogged from the inside so if you blow them out with caned air you just put all the dust back in the case so you may need to disassemble the case to clean it out.
Second.
i fount a 2 fan laptop cooler. it is a small platform that you set your notbook on it has 2 fans and runs off one of your usb ports.
it helps keep the underside cooler and the heat pumped out from under the pc. it sure does help mine a lot just thought i would share my thoughts here
Oldbitcollector said...
Just an addendum to this thread to mention that Sun's VM box software w/XP can
really put a load on CPU (hence potential heat/fan issues on a laptop)
If you find this combination causing some issues, check the following commands
to get things under control. cpufreq-set & cpufreq-info
I find once the USB port is enabled in Virtualbox the CPU usage climbs to about 50% when idle. If you never enable the USB port it seems to idle quite comfortably at about 3%.
I experimented with this a while ago. I'm running Ubuntu 8.10 and I got the open version of Virtualbox from the repositories. This doesn't include USB drivers, so I haven't tried them. I keep an old CD of windows 2000 around in case something absolutely has to be done in windows (which happens less and less, fortunately). I installed it on a VM and enabled the serial port option connecting to my computer's /dev/tts0 (a 'real' serial port, not an USB one). Then I hooked up my old (serial) Propstick to the serial port and everything worked ok. I do recall I had some trouble making Win2k to use the serial port (I just forced it to assume there was one in the port's hardware address, because it didn't recognize it by itself).
Comments
After dancing with Google most of the afternoon and restarting VM a million times, I finally have
the Propeller tool properly identifying the Prop. But it keeps loosing the propeller during the verification
step when programming it. Did you run into this? I've started debugging this issue by reducing the
send/receive bytes, etc but haven't beaten it yet. Ideas?
For those who are following this thread.. be warned this isn't for the faint of heart yet.. [noparse]:)[/noparse]
It appears that it can be done, but it's not an out-of-the-box solution.
OBC
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New to the Propeller?
Getting started with a Propeller Protoboard?
Check out: Introduction to the Proboard & Propeller Cookbook 1.4
Updates to the Cookbook are now posted to: Propeller.warrantyvoid.us
Got an SD card connected? - PropDOS
see attached picture of verify screen.
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Aka: CosmicBob
Loaded Sporkfrog's Linux solution with 30 mins and it worked perfectly.
We could adapt a nice IDE to that solutions and be golden.
OBC
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New to the Propeller?
Getting started with a Propeller Protoboard?
Check out: Introduction to the Proboard & Propeller Cookbook 1.4
Updates to the Cookbook are now posted to: Propeller.warrantyvoid.us
Got an SD card connected? - PropDOS
which had been hacked into submission. (One of those hackfoo, low memory,
low overhead, don't ask me where I got it copies)
It will now find and correctly load the Propeller from Proptool most of the time.
I'd say that you shouldn't try this unless you have a reasonably current computer
with plenty of memory. My dual 3gig Pentium 4 with 512mb ram is just
getting by. I'll try this later with a copy of Win2k when I find my copy.
Maybe we could sweetly ask Jeff to give the I/O routines a just a little more
slack in the next release of Proptool.
It's a good setup.
OBC
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
New to the Propeller?
Getting started with a Propeller Protoboard?
Check out: Introduction to the Proboard & Propeller Cookbook 1.4
Updates to the Cookbook are now posted to: Propeller.warrantyvoid.us
Got an SD card connected? - PropDOS
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Paul Baker
Propeller Applications Engineer
Parallax, Inc.
(It's an x86 binary and will work on Linux 386 and x86_64)
Configure a serial port in virtualbox using a unix socket.
Port Mode : Host Pipe.
Create Pipe : Checked
Port Path : /tmp/ploader
then run up virtualbox and get windows to detect the new serial port.
fire up ./pload in a terminal window and just let it sit there. You can test it by trying to detect a propeller with PropTool.
pload pretends to be a propeller to the VM, and accepts downloads from Proptool. When the download completes it turns around and tries to download it to a propeller on /dev/ttyUSB0.
(You can change the serial port and pipe with command line options. pload -? will get you those).
Just hit enter to abort pload. You can start and stop it as many times as you like while the VM is active and it'll just keep working. It won't load unless /tmp/ploader exists and it can connect to it. (it's a unix socket).
It might look for libusb also (this also has the ability to download to my USB bootloader if it can find it.. )
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Pull my finger!
Post Edited (BradC) : 9/23/2008 5:24:13 AM GMT
really put a load on CPU (hence potential heat/fan issues on a laptop)
If you find this combination causing some issues, check the following commands
to get things under control. cpufreq-set & cpufreq-info
Once I reduced my CPU load a little, all of my problems in regard to CPU load
went away. (I'm sure it wouldn't hurt to do a check on my laptop fans)
OBC
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
New to the Propeller?
Getting started with a Propeller Protoboard?
Check out: Introduction to the Proboard & Propeller Cookbook 1.4
Updates to the Cookbook are now posted to: Propeller.warrantyvoid.us
Got an SD card connected? - PropDOS
if you have problems with a laptop over heating first the obvious make sure your fan and heat sink is clean .. for toshiba users be careful the fan blows in to out so the inside of the heat sinks get clogged from the inside so if you blow them out with caned air you just put all the dust back in the case so you may need to disassemble the case to clean it out.
Second.
i fount a 2 fan laptop cooler. it is a small platform that you set your notbook on it has 2 fans and runs off one of your usb ports.
it helps keep the underside cooler and the heat pumped out from under the pc. it sure does help mine a lot just thought i would share my thoughts here
Badger
I find once the USB port is enabled in Virtualbox the CPU usage climbs to about 50% when idle. If you never enable the USB port it seems to idle quite comfortably at about 3%.
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Pull my finger!