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MEC172x Modular Card ASSY6930 (Rev. B)

Overview

The MEC172x Modular Card ASSY6930 (Rev. B) is a development board to evaluate the Microchip MEC172X series microcontrollers. This board can work standalone or be mated with any platform that complies with MECC specification.

Hardware

  • MEC172x (MEC1723, MEC1727 and MEC1728) ARM Cortex-M4 Processor

  • 416 KB RAM and 128 KB boot ROM

  • UART1 using microUSB

  • PECI interface 3.0

  • FAN, PWM and TACHO pins

  • 5 SMBus instances

  • eSPI header

  • VCI interface

  • 1 hardware driven PS/2 ports

  • Keyboard interface headers

For more information about the SOC please see MEC172x Reference Manual [1]

At difference from MEC172x evaluation board, modular MEC172x exposes the pins in 2 different ways:

  1. Standalone mode via headers

    • GPIOs

    • JTAG port

    • eSPI bus

    • I2C0, I2C1 and I2C6

    • PWM1, PWM2, PWM3

    • Shared SPI

    • Keyboard Interface

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

    • FAN, PWM8

    • I2C3 and I2C7

    • eSPI bus

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

Supported Features

The mec172xmodular_assy6930 (Rev. B) 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

I2C

on-chip

i2c

PINMUX

on-chip

pinmux

PS/2

on-chip

ps2

KSCAN

on-chip

kscan

TACH

on-chip

tachometer

RPMFAN

on-chip

Fan speed controller

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

The default configuration can be found in the boards/microchip/mec172xmodular_assy6930/mec172xmodular_assy6930_defconfig Kconfig file.

Connections and IOs

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

System Clock

The MEC172x MCU is configured to use the 96Mhz 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 MEC172x Modular Assy 6930 Rev B1p1

Boot-ROM Straps

This jumper configures MEC172x Boot-ROM strap.

JP23 (UART_BSTRAP)

1-2

JP23 1-2 pulls UART_BSTRAP to GND. MEC172x Boot-ROM samples UART_BSTRAP and if low, UART interface is used for Crisis Recovery.

Boot Source Select

The jumpers below configure MEC172x to boot from Shared SPI, Slave Attached Flash (SAF) or Master Attached Flash (MAF).

Boot Source

JP25

Shared SPI or SAF

5-6

MAF

1-2, 4-6

Programming and Debugging

Setup

  1. If you use Dediprog SF100 programmer, then setup it.

    Windows version can be found at the SF100 Product page [5].

    Linux version source code can be found at SF100 Linux GitHub [4]. Follow the SF100 Linux manual [6] to complete setup of the SF100 programmer. For Linux please make sure that you copied 60-dediprog.rules from the SF100Linux folder to the /etc/udev/rules.s (or rules.d) then restart service using:

    $ udevadm control --reload
    

    Add directory with program dpcmd (on Linux) or dpcmd.exe (on Windows) to your PATH.

  2. Clone the MEC172x SPI Image Gen [3] repository or download the files within that directory.

  3. Make the image generation available for Zephyr, by making the tool searchable by path, for example:

    -DMEC172X_SPI_GEN=<path to spi_gen tool>/mec172x_spi_gen_lin_x86_64
    

    Note that the tools for Linux and Windows have different file names.

  4. The default MEC172X_SPI_CFG file is spi_cfg.txt located in ${BOARD_DIR}/support. Example of SPI_CFG for 4MBit (spi_cfg_4MBit.txt) and 128MBit (spi_cfg_128MBit.txt) SPI flash can be found in the same folder. If needed, a custom SPI image configuration file can be specified to override the default one.

    -DMEC172X_SPI_CFG=<path to spi_cfg file>/spi_cfg.txt
    
  5. Example command to generate 128MBit spi image for hello_world:

    west build -p auto -b mec172xmodular_assy6930 samples/hello_world -- -DMEC172X_SPI_GEN=$HOME/CPGZephyrDocs/MEC172x/SPI_image_gen/mec172x_spi_gen_lin_x86_64 -DMEC172X_SPI_CFG=$HOME/zephyrproject/zephyr/boards/microchip/mec172xmodular_assy6930/support/spi_cfg_128MBit.txt
    

Wiring

  1. Connect programmer to the header J2 on the ASSY6930 board, it will flash the SPI NOR chip U2. Make sure that your programmer’s offset is 0x0. For programming you can use Dediprog SF100 or a similar tool for flashing SPI chips.

    Dediprog Connector

    J2

    VCC

    1

    GND

    2

    CS

    3

    CLK

    4

    MISO

    6

    MOSI

    5

  2. Connect UART1 port of the mec172xmodular_assy6930 (Rev. B) board to your host computer using the RS232 cable.

  3. Apply power to the board via a micro-USB cable. Configure this option by using a jumper between JP22 1-2.

Building

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

  2. The file spi_image.bin will be created if the build system can find the image generation tool. This binary image can be used to flash the SPI chip.

Flashing

  1. Run your favorite terminal program to listen for output. Under Linux the terminal should be /dev/ttyUSB0. Do not close it.

    For example:

    $ minicom -D /dev/ttyUSB0 -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

  2. Flash your board using west from the second terminal window. Split first and second terminal windows to view both of them.

    $ west flash
    

    Note

    When west process started press Reset button S1 and do not release it till the whole west process will not be finished successfully.

  3. You should see "Hello World! mec172xmodular_assy6930" in the first terminal window. If you don’t see this message, press the Reset button and the message should appear.

Debugging

J1 header on the board allows for JTAG connections for debug.

Troubleshooting

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

  2. If you can’t program the board using Dediprog, disconnect and reconnect cable connected to P1 and try again.

  3. If Dediprog can’t detect the onboard flash, press the board’s S1 Reset button and try again.

References