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Microchip MEC1501 Modular card ASSY6885

Overview

The MEC1501 Modular card ASSY6885 is a development board to evaluate the Microchip MEC152X series microcontrollers. This board can work standalone or be mated with any platform that complies with MECC specification.

MEC1501 Modular ASSY 6885

Hardware

  • MEC1521HA0SZ ARM Cortex-M4 Processor

  • 256 KB RAM and 64 KB boot ROM

  • GPIO headers

  • UART1 using microUSB

  • PECI interface 3.0

  • 10 SMBUS instances

  • FAN, PMW and TACHO pins

  • VCI interface

  • Independent Hardware Driven PS/2 Ports

At difference from MEC15xx evaluation board, modular MEC1521 exposes the pins in 2 different ways:

  1. Standalone mode via headers

    • GPIOs

    • PWM5

    • JTAG/SWD, ETM and MCHP Trace ports

    • eSPI bus

    • SMB0

  2. Mated mode with another platform that has a high density MECC connector.

    • FAN0, PWM0, SMB0, SMB1, SMB4 and SMB5

    • eSPI bus

    • Breathing/Blinking LEDs

The board is powered through the +5V USB Micro A connector or from the MECC connector.

For more information about the SOC please see the MEC152x Reference Manual [1]

Supported Features

The mec1501modular_assy6885 board configuration supports the following hardware features:

Interface

Controller

Driver/Component

NVIC

on-chip

nested vector interrupt controller

SYSTICK

on-chip

systick

UART

on-chip

serial port

GPIO

on-chip

gpio

ESPI

on-chip

espi

I2C

on-chip

i2c

PINMUX

on-chip

pinmux

RTOS

on-chip

timer

TIMER

on-chip

counter

PWM

on-chip

pwm

ADC

on-chip

adc

WATCHDOG

on-chip

watchdog

PS2

on-chip

ps2

Other hardware features are not currently supported by Zephyr (at the moment)

The default configuration can be found in the boards/microchip/mec1501modular_assy6885/mec1501modular_assy6885_defconfig Kconfig file.

Connections and IOs

This evaluation board kit is comprised of the following HW blocks:

System Clock

The MEC1501 MCU is configured to use the 48Mhz internal oscillator with the on-chip PLL to generate a resulting EC clock rate of 12 MHz. See Processor clock control register in chapter 4 “4.0 POWER, CLOCKS, and RESETS” of the data sheet in the references at the end of this document.

Serial Port

UART1 is configured for serial logs.

Jumper settings

Please follow the jumper settings below to properly demo this board. Advanced users may deviate from this recommendation.

Jumper setting for MEC1501 Modular Assy 6885 Rev A1p0

Boot-ROM Straps

These jumpers configure MEC1501 Boot-ROM straps.

JP37 (CMP_STRAP)

J6 (CR_STRAP)

JP41 (VTR2_STRAP)

JP23 (BSS_STRAP)

1-2

1-2

1-2

3-4

JP23 3-4 pulls SHD SPI CS0# up to VTR2. MEC1501 Boot-ROM samples SHD SPI CS0# and if high, it loads code from SHD SPI. This is the recommended setup.

CR_STRAP

BSS_STRAP

SOURCE

0

X

Use 3.3V Private SPI

1

0

Use eSPI Flash channel

1

Use 3.3V Shared channel(R)

Power management

JP20 2-3 is required so all GPIOs powered by VTR3 rail worked at 1.8V.

Note

External 1.8V needs to be connected to JP13.1

JP20 (VTR3 selection)

JP13 (1.8V source)

2-3

1.8V to pin 1

Jumper location map

+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|                  |------------|                     +----------+ J10              || |
|  [BT1]       +   +------------+ J50                                      ++   ++  || |
|              |                                           JP38 JP43       ++   ||  || |
|              +         +      +       +-+ JP4              +    +       JP26  ||  || |
|             JP6        +      +                  +      +  + +  + +           ||  || |
|    JP31 ++            JP32   JP36     +-+ JP27   +      +    +    +           J6  || |
|                                                 JP18  JP37 JP41 JP42              ++ |
|         ++                  +   +    +--------+                                  J48 |
|         ||  JP21            +   +    +--------+ JP22    +----------+                 |
|      J2 ||   +            JP34 JP30                         J11              ++      |
|         ++   +                                                  J44          ||      |
|                            ++                         +----------------+     ||      |
|       +---------------+    ||  +        JP24          |----------------|     ++      |
|       |---------------|    ++  +    +----------+      +----------------+    J47      |
| JP20  +---------------+  JP23  JP40 +----------+                                  ++ |
|                                                     +           ++ JP29           || |
|                             +  +    +----------+    +                             || |
|    J52+---------------+     +  +    +----------+   J5   +-------------+           ++ |
|    J45+---------------+  JP33 TP57      JP25            +-------------+ J4       J49 |
|                                                                                      |
| ++                                           TP4   +----------+   ++                 |
| ++     +    +      +    +    +       +  TP61         +----------+   ++               |
| JP28   +    +      +    +    +  TP65 +  TP60            J51        JP35              |
|      TP58 JP16   JP11 JP13 JP15     JP10                                             |
| TP5                                                                                  |
| TP6                                        TP1                                       |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

Programming and Debugging

Setup

  1. Clone the MEC152x SPI Image Gen [3] repository or download the files within that directory. For the pre-production MEC150x use the MEC150x SPI Image Gen [4] repository.

  2. Make the image generation available for Zephyr, by making the tool searchable by path, or by setting an environment variable EVERGLADES_SPI_GEN, for example:

    export EVERGLADES_SPI_GEN=<path to tool>/everglades_spi_gen_RomE
    

    Note that the tools for Linux and Windows have different file names. For the pre-production MEC1501 SOC use everglades_spi_gen_lin64.

  3. If needed, a custom SPI image configuration file can be specified to override the default one.

    export EVERGLADES_SPI_CFG=custom_spi_cfg.txt
    

Building

  1. Build Hello World application as you would normally do.

  2. Once you have zephyr.bin, use the MEC152x SPI Image Gen [3] microchip tool to create the final binary. You need the output from this tool to flash in the SHD SPI memory.

Flashing

  1. Connect Dediprog into header J2.

  2. Flash the SPI NOR U3 at offset 0x0 using Dediprog SF100 or a similar tool for flashing SPI chips.

  3. Run your favorite terminal program to listen for output. Under Linux the terminal should be /dev/ttyACM0. For example:

    $ minicom -D /dev/ttyACM0 -o
    

    The -o option tells minicom not to send the modem initialization string. Connection should be configured as follows:

    • Speed: 115200

    • Data: 8 bits

    • Parity: None

    • Stop bits: 1

  4. Connect the MEC1501MODULAR_ASSY6885 board to your host computer using the UART1 port and apply power.

    You should see "Hello World! mec1501modular_assy6885" in your terminal.

Debugging

This board comes with a Cortex ETM port which facilitates tracing and debugging using a single physical connection. In addition, it comes with sockets for JTAG only sessions.

HW Issues

In case you don’t see your application running, please make sure LED1 is lit. If is off, then check the power related jumpers again.

References