Texas Instruments MSP430 (MSP430F449) RTOS Port
for the MSPGCC (GCC) Development Tools
[RTOS Ports]

The port was developed on an ES449 development/prototyping board from SoftBaugh (instructions are provided should you wish to use an alternative development board), using the free MSPGCC development tool chain and a SoftBaugh FETP parallel port JTAG interface

The ES449 is a neat little MSP430F449 based prototyping board. It allows easy access to the MSP430 peripherals and includes an LCD display - great for debugging!

There is also a port to the Olimex MSP430F149 based EasyWEB2 development board. See the 'MSP430F149 EasyWeb2 Port' section at the bottom of this page.

FreeRTOS V5.1.0 upgraded this port and demo to permit tasks to use the MSP430 low power modes 1 to 3 - requiring interrupt service routines to be qualified with the "wakeup" keyword. The UART driver in the demo application provides an example.

IMPORTANT! Notes on using the MSPGCC MSP430 RTOS port

1. Source Code Organization
2. Installing the Compiler
3. The Demo Application
4. Configuration and Usage Details

Source Code Organization

See the Source Code Organization section for a description of the downloaded files and information on creating a new project.

The makefile used to build the MSP430 FreeRTOS demo project is located in the Demo/msp430 directory.

Installing the Compiler Tool Chain

1. Go to the MSPGCC download page and obtain the latest MSPGCC installation. I used the 'mspgcc-20040723.exe' download which installed everything I needed for a Win32 setup.

2. This step need only be performed if you wish to use the graphical version of GDB.

   The latest MSPGCC download only includes the command line GDB debugger. I prefer to use the graphical version called Insight. A slightly older prebuilt version of Insight can be used. Install this older version of insight into a different directory to that chosen for the latest MSPGCC installation as you don't want to overwrite the files obtained in step 1.

   You should now have two installations. The latest version of MSPGCC installed during step 1, and a slightly older version of Insight from step 2. Both versions of the GDB debugger are called msp430-gdb.exe so one needs to be renamed. Locate the older version msp430-gdb.exe from the files installed during this step and rename it msp430-insight.exe.

3. Ensure the BIN directory from the files installed during step 1 and the BIN directory from the files installed during step 2 are included in your PATH environment variable.

The Demo Application

Functionality

The single on board LED is used by one of the ComTest tasks. It is toggled every time a character is received on the serial port.

When executing correctly the demo application will behave as follows:

• The first three '*' characters on the LCD are under control of the 'flash' tasks. Each will flash at a constant frequency, with the first '*' being the slowest and the third being the fastest.

• The on board LED will flash each time a character is received on the serial port (see the hardware setup section below).

• Not all the tasks update the LCD so have no visible indication that they are operating correctly. Therefore a 'Check' task is created whose job it is to ensure that no errors have been detected in any of the other tasks.

  The '*' in the fifth position on the LCD is under control of the 'Check' task. Every three seconds the 'Check' task examines all the tasks in the system to ensure they are executing without error. It then toggles '*' 5. If '*' 5 is toggling every three seconds then no errors have ever been detected. The toggle rate increasing to 500ms indicates that the 'Check' task has discovered at least one error.

Demo application hardware setup

The demo application uses the LCD in place of LEDs so no other hardware setup is required.

Building the demo application

Executing the RTOS demo from FLASH

1. Remove power from the ES449 prototyping board.

2. Connect the FETP JTAG adapter to the ES449 using the provided parallel port cable.

3. From your build directory (FreeRTOS/Demo/MSP430) type the command ...

   msp430-jtag -ep a.out

   ... this will erase the flash then program it with a.out.

4. Remove the FETP JTAG adaptor and power up the ES449. The demo application will execute.

Executing the RTOS demo using the JTAG debugger

1. Remove power from the ES449 prototyping board.

2. Connect the FETP JTAG adapter to the ES449 using the provided parallel port cable.

3. The MSPGCC download includes a program called msp430-gdbproxy.exe. This intercepts the GDB TCP commands and redirects them to the parallel port. Start msp430-gdbproxy (a shortcut to this will have been placed on the start menu when MSPGCC was installed). By default msp430-gdbproxy uses port 3333 - do not change this.

4. Program the flash as per the instruction in the section above. The flash can be programmed from within GDB but it is much faster to do it separately and beforehand.

5. Start the debugger using the command ...

   msp430-insight a.out

   ... the commands in the gdb.ini file will do the rest. If you prefer to use the command line debugger simply replace msp430-insight with msp430-gdb.

6. Insight will start at and the program will stop at the breakpoint in main() as shown below.

The debugger works well in most instances but suffers from a few problems - as noted on the MSPGCC website. Also note the following points:

• When using the FETP JTAG adapter do not provide any other power source to the ES449 target hardware. I have found that doing so prevents the microcontroller timers from operating.

• When stopped on a breakpoint it appears as if the microcontrollers timers continue counting rather than stopping at the value they contained when the breakpoint was hit. As a timer compare match interrupt is used stepping through the code can result in the interrupt firing continuously (as the timer continues counting there is always an interrupt pending so as soon as you leave one you enter the next). It is therefore difficult when using the preemptive kernel to step through the code once the RTOS scheduler has been started and it is best to use the cooperative kernel when debugging.

Configuration and Usage Details

Serial port driver

It should also be noted that the serial drivers are written to test some of the real time kernel features - and they are not intended to represent an optimised solution.

RTOS port specific configuration

Each port #defines 'BaseType_t' to equal the most efficient data type for that processor. This port defines BaseType_t to be of type short.

Note that vPortEndScheduler() has not been implemented.

To use a part other than an MSP430F449

• prvSetupTimerInterrupt() in Source/portable/GCC/MSP430F449/port.c configures the microcontroller timer to generate the RTOS tick.
• Port, memory access and system clock configuration is performed by prvSetupHardware() within Demo/MSP430/main.c.
• The serial port drivers.
• Register location definitions are provided by the file msp430x44x.h which is included at the top of Demo/MSP430/FreeRTOSConfig.h.
• RAM size - see Memory Allocation below.

Switching between the pre-emptive and co-operative RTOS kernels

Compiler options

Do not lower the optimisation level below O2 as this changes the way parameters are passed to functions and will prevent the real time kernel operating correctly.

Memory allocation

MSP430F149 EasyWeb2 Port

Please note that this port has not yet been upgraded to use the FreeRTOS V3.0.0 API.