[ixp1200] Canadian ixp1200 Woes

[Scott C. Karlin]

Hi Loren,

Most questions dealing with getting the board "to work" are
best handled by Intel support.  However, I have tried to
answer some of them below.


On Thu, Nov 08, 2001 at 11:15:58AM -0600, lcard wrote:
> 
> I've got an IXP12EB kit. (Not the fancy IXDP1200 Development platform with 
> the single board computer.)
> 
> One of the problems I have is I don't know what silicon I have. (A0, B0,
> C0? How many are there anyway?)

Here are three ways to find out your IXP1200 revision.

1.  Read the value in the ID_CHIP register.  See section 4.10.1 of
    the IXP1200 Network Processor Programmer's Reference.  (Obviously,
    this only works if you can run code on your chip.)

2.  Compare the package marking on the IXP1200 chip with the table on
    page 10 of the Intel IXP1200 Network Processor Specification Update
    (August 2001).  You will need to temporarily remove the fan from
    the chip.  Older (especially A stepping) parts are not listed in
    the table so this is not fool-proof.

3.  Contact Intel directly and supply them with board serial numbers.
    They may be able to tell you what you have.

> I don't know if there are different revisions of the IXP12EB kit,
> and I don't know if there are different revisions of the PCI blade
> either.  Do you know the revision history of the silicon?

See above.

> The PCI blade? The IXP12EB kit?

I'm not sure what you mean by "blade".  Do you mean network
interface card?  That is, the PCI board?

> When I manipulate the J12 and J26 jumpers on the PCI card with a
> console (9600 baud, 8 data bits, No Parity bit, 1 stop bit) attached:
>
> 1. The Boot Manager will not start. (The SDK 1.0 documentation does not
> reference a boot manager, so maybe I just doesn't have one on my flash
> image...) Some trash is sent to the console however. At first I figured
> this was just my console not set up properly, so I tried different speeds,
> and setups, with no luck. 

Given that you have the SDK 1.0 CD-ROM, I suspect that your board is
an older board with an A0 stepping of the IXP1200 chip.

> 2. It won't start the VxWorks loader (Nothing is sent to the serial
> port. Various documentation indicates the console should be used set up
> the FTP client to grab a Vxworks kernel image, but that doesn't work,
> because the console is dead.)
> 
> 3. It doesn't start the Angel Debugger. Oddly, this setting sends the same
> trash to the console as the setting for the boot manager.

I believe that the Angel debugger runs at 19200 baud and does not
use an ASCII protocol to communicate with the PC.

> 4. The diagnostics setting DOES work. This makes me think my console setup  
> also works. I can run through the tests, and send test commands, and
> receive test data back.
> 
> Those four points make me think that one (or both) of the flash chips on
> the PCI blade are probably corrupt. 
> 
> I can't burn parts, but I can probably find someone to do it for me, so
> some Flash ROM images would be really helpful. It would be even better if
> they were stored on Flash ROMs. Does anyone have any? 

There is one on the SDK 1.2 CD-ROM.  I don't know if it will work
on all boards.

For a while, the Flash parts were on allocation and very hard to get.

> I would love to run VxWorks, or Linux, or anything other than the
> diagnostics at this point.
> 
> Any help you can provide, including the names of support contacts would be
> greatly appreciated.

I think your best bet on getting support from Intel is to work backward
from where you ordered or received the board.

Good Luck,

Scott