QNX® Momentics® 6.3.0 X86 BIOS BSP 1.0.0 Release Notes

Date of this edition: February 13, 2006

Target OS:
QNX^® Neutrino^® 6.3.0 SP1 or later for QNX^® Neutrino^® and Linux hosts,
QNX^® Neutrino^® 6.3.0 SP2 for Windows hosts.
Host OS: Microsoft Windows XP SP1 or SP2, 2000 SP4, or NT SP6a; QNX^® Neutrino^® 6.3.0 SP1 or later; Linux Red Hat 8, 9, or Enterprise WS 3 or 4

Boards supported: X86 boards with a BIOS

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The purpose of this BSP is to provide source code for the most common x86 drivers necessary to boot QNX Neutrino on an x86 board with BIOS. Due to the variety of x86 boards available, this generic BSP might require modifications to run on a particular x86 board. However it should allow you to boot QNX Neutrino on most x86 boards. Since this is a generic BSP, its documentation has been kept very generic too. We assume that you're familiar with your board settings, connection/communication methods and booting mechanisms. Therefore these items will not be explained, in details, in the documentation.

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You need to have installed QNX Momentics 6.3.0 SP1 before installing this BSP. For information on installing this BSP, see the installation note. For the most up-to-date version of these release notes, log into your myQNX account, and then go to the Download Center area of www.qnx.com.

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Contents

• What's in this BSP?
  • Binary components
  • Source code
  • Documentation
• Location of source and documentation
• Known issues for this BSP
• Technical support

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Throughout this document, you may see reference numbers associated with particular issues, changes, etc. When corresponding with our Technical Support staff about a given issue, please quote the relevant reference number. You might also find the reference numbers useful for tracking issues as they become fixed.

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What's in this BSP?

This BSP contains:

• Binary components
• Source code
• Documentation.

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The source code requires a BSP Source License.

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Binary components

• Startup (included with the OS)
• Serial driver (Included with the OS)
• PCI server (included with the OS)

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  The binary portion of this BSP contains documentation only since the BSP binaries are already included by default in QNX Momentics 6.3.0 SP1.

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Source code

• Startup
• Serial driver
• PCI server server
• Flash driver

Documentation

• X86 BIOS Board Support Package readme (HTML)

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Each BSP guide contains board-specific information and instructions on building an OS image for that particular board. The procedure for building BSPs has changed since QNX Momentics 6.2.1. For instance, you must now run the . ./setenv.sh script before compiling your BSP source. For details, see the chapter Working with a BSP in the Building Embedded Systems manual (in the Documentation Roadmap page under the QNX Neutrino RTOS section).

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Location of source and documentation

When you install BSPs, you'll find the source code and documentation in the following locations:

Windows hosts

Component	Location
Source code	$QNX_TARGET\usr\src\archives\qnx\
Documentation	$QNX_TARGET\usr\help\product\bsp_index.html
Release notes	$QNX_TARGET\etc\readme\bsp

QNX Neutrino, Linux, and Solaris hosts

Component	Location
Source code	$QNX_TARGET/usr/src/archives/qnx/
Documentation	$QNX_TARGET/usr/help/product/bsp_index.html
Release notes	$QNX_TARGET/etc/readme/bsp

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To extract the source from the archive, use any application that supports the ZIP format (e.g. WinZIP). For more information, see the chapter "Working with a BSP" in the Building Embedded Systems manual. The "roadmap" page (e.g. from the Windows XP start menu: Release notes-->All Programs-->QNX Momentics 6.3.0-->Documentation) contains links to the various HTML booksets that accompany the OS: System Architecture, Building Embedded Systems, Programmer's Guide, Library Reference, Utilities Reference, etc.

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Binaries, buildfiles, IPLs, and other files

Depending on the particular BSP and type of driver, you'll find the files in these locations:

Windows hosts

File	Location
Buildfile	$QNX_TARGET\cpu\boot\build
IPL and/or startup	$QNX_TARGET\cpu\boot\sys
"sbin" drivers (serial, flash, block, PCI, PCMCIA, USB)	$QNX_TARGET\cpu\sbin
"dll" drivers (audio, graphics, network)	$QNX_TARGET\cpu\lib\dll

QNX Neutrino, Linux, and Solaris hosts

File	Location
Buildfile	$QNX_TARGET/cpu/boot/build
IPL and/or startup	$QNX_TARGET/cpu/boot/sys
"sbin" drivers (serial, flash, block, PCI, PCMCIA, USB)	$QNX_TARGET/cpu/sbin
"dll" drivers (audio, graphics, network)	$QNX_TARGET/cpu/lib/dll

Known issues for this BSP

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Please check the version of these release notes on the website for the most up-to-date information.

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• A ldbootstrap issue prevents this BSP from compiling on a Microsoft Windows host with QNX Neutrino 6.3.0 SP1.

  Workaround: Use QNX Neutrino 6.3.0 SP2 under Windows hosts.

• In Microsoft Windows, certain programs (e.g. Norton Ghost) add directories inside double quotation marks (e.g. ...;"c:\Program Files\Norton Ghost\";...) to your PATH environment variable. This causes the Cygwin spawn() function to fail, which in turn causes cp to fail when called by ln-w. (Ref# 20046)

  Workaround: Modify your PATH environment variable and remove any quotation marks.

• To build the BSP from the command line, you need to extract the source code from the zip file. In Microsoft Windows, make sure you place the source code in a directory that doesn't contain any spaces in its name.

• Some warnings may be displayed when compiling this BSP with one or both supported compilers. These warnings are benign and do not affect the functionality of the resulting binaries.

• In those instances where the the ROM monitor's MAC address is different from the one you pass in when running io-net, the host can cache the ROM monitor's address. This can result in a loss of connectivity.

  Workaround: If you need to specify a MAC address to io-net, we recommend that you use the same MAC address that the ROM monitor uses. This will ensure that if the host caches the ROM monitor's MAC address, you'll still be able to communicate with the target. Otherwise you might need to delete the target's arp entry on your host.

• The TCP/IP stack obtains a timer from the process manager. This timer starts at 0. If the TCP/IP stack and a TCP/IP application that tries to connect to a remote host start executing too soon, the TCP/IP stack may apply a time of 0 seconds to ARP cache entry structures. If this occurs, you may end up with a permanent ARP entry (i.e. one that never times out). You can also end up with permanent, incomplete ARP entries that never time out, and that the TCP/IP stack doesn't attempt to resolve. If this happens, your host won't be able to communicate with one or (possibly) more remote hosts (i.e. the ones the TCP/IP application in the OS image is trying to reach).

  You can check for permanent ARP entries by running the arp -an command and examining the output. The only permanent entries listed should be for the IP addresses assigned to your host's interfaces; there shouldn't be any permanent, incomplete entries. If you find a permanent entry that isn't for the IP address of an interface on your host, and you didn't explicitly create a permanent entry, then you could be encountering this problem. (Ref# 21395)

  Workaround: In the buildfile for your OS image, delay the start of the TCP/IP stack or the first TCP/IP application by at least one second, by using the sleep command (e.g. sleep 1) or some other delay mechanism.

• When you install several BSPs that share common files, you'll be prompted to overwrite the existing files. We recommend that you backup the existing files before you overwrite them. Uninstalling any BSP that shares that file will currently remove the common file. You'll need to restore the backup after you uninstall any BSP that shared the file(s). (Ref# 22922)

Technical support

If you have any questions, comments, or problems with a QNX product, please contact Technical Support. For more information, see the How to Get Help chapter of the Welcome to QNX Momentics guide or visit our website, www.qnx.com.