rtems-users Digest, Vol 27, Issue 2

[Allan Hessenflow]

Ed Sutter wrote:
> Joel Sherrill wrote:
> > MOLM wrote:
> >> I have an application running on a BF537 stamp card, using posix code 
> >> that is working using uClinux on the same card. What I experience now 
> >> is loss of characters, even at 300baud, so I do not think the problem 
> >> is primary interrupthandler related. I have ended up with a test 
> >> scenario connecting the Tx line to the Rx line of the uart, writing a 
> >> string of characters, and then reading one by one characters back. 
> >> When the string written contains more than 3 characters I am only able 
> >> to read back the last three characters. I have scanned through the 
> >> termios implementation, buf it seems to me that the default buffersize 
> >> is not modified by the BSP implemetation. Below is the code I used for 
> >> the test and the output. Anyone experienced something like this?
> > 
> > Random thoughts without reading the hardware manual. 
> > 
> > Since you have tied the TX to the RX, is there any chance that the
> > RX has a 3 byte FIFO and the TX has a deeper one?  If this is the
> > case, then you would keep putting characters into the TX and
> > simultaneously overflowing the RX.
> > 
> > Another possibility is that the serial port is polled by default.

> If I recall correctly, the BF537's UART doesn't have a FIFO, so for
> anything real you have to turn on the DMA engine hooked to the UART.
> Then, the DMA buffer is essentially the equivalent of the FIFO.
> Is there any chance that the RTEMS port of the BF537 isn't using
> DMA?

The Blackfin UART driver in RTEMS does not use DMA.  However there's no
reason at this point to believe MOLM's application will require it.  I
just duplicated MOLM's test result with the UART driver in polled mode
(which is the default).  If I build it interrupt-driven (with the
configure option CONSOLE_USE_INTERRUPTS=1) then that test passes.  I tried
making the string somewhat longer with no problems, and I expect it to be
fine up to the termios buffer size.

Incidentally, when in polled mode, only receiving the last three bytes
sent is explained by a combination of the tx and rx buffering, not rx
alone which only has a single byte holding register.  The other two bytes
are the one being transmitted/reassembled at the time read is called and
the one still in the transmit holding register.

allan

-- 
Allan N. Hessenflow      allanh at kallisti.com