Re: old/new MVME-177 compatability

[Andrew Johnson <anj@aps.anl.gov>]

Paul Sichta wrote:
> I plan to buy a MVME-177 from Motorola in order to have a
> second spare CPU.  They discontinued production of the model
> MVME177-013 in August 2000, and now offer a replacement
> based upon their Petra ASIC.  The part number is now
> MVME177P-64SE.  Has anyone used the (new) Petra ASIC boards?
> Are they swappable with the original MVME-177 boards?

We use Petra versions of the MVME-162 and MVME-172, which are completely 
plug compatible, although they do look a bit different to the older boards.

> Wind River doesn't make mention of a separate bsp for the
> new MVME177P .

The same BSP works with both versions, although there is a one-line change 
that you should probably make (it's not clear whether it's still needed as 
it was a workaround for a bug in the Petra chip that might have been fixed 
in later versions, but as the modified code works with pre-Petra boards 
anyway it's worth making it just in case):

In the sys596IntDisable() routine (sysLib.c), replace the code
    *PCC2_LANC_IRQ_CR &= ~LANC_IRQ_CR_IEN;
with
    *PCC2_LANC_IRQ_CR &= ~ABORT_IRQ_LEVEL;

Without this modification it is possible for a busy network to cause the 
network connection to become unreliable, although you might not notice it. 
 I have an similar change in all my mv16x and mv17x BSPs, just to be safe.

- Andrew
--
"Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans." - John Lennon