MCB2400 Dev-kit External Memory Controller

[Claire_Reid]

Hi Ben,

LaRisa is out of the office, so I will see what I can do to help you with this. You said you are using LabVIEW 8.6, I just want to confirm that this is the version you are using, and not 8.6.1. The reason I ask is because there is a known issue with the Peek/Poke VIs for 8.6.1.

[Gmg]

Hello again,

So I took a look at the generated code for the poke VI, and I believe I know the problem.

Is there a reason you must modify flash during runtime?  If it is something changing during runtime, it makes much more sense to use RAM instead (and you have plenty of external RAM).   Otherwise, I would stick with modifying the flash during the initial download of the program.

I say this because modifying flash is not as simple as RAM.   It is perfectly fine to use peek/poke with RAM, but only peek will work with flash.  This is because using the poke will simply use a pointer and assign a value, but flash requires more complicated functions (this is the reason we needed to specify an algorithm for the initial flash download).

If you must program flash at runtime, you might be able to use IAP (In-Application Programming).  This is discussed in the LPC23xx user manual and an example of this would be the algorithm that is used when downloading to the flash at program start (C:\Keil\ARM\Flash\SST39x320x).  You could (hopefully) use c nodes to perform this function.

Another option might be to use the Flash file system to create/write files in the desired flash "drive".   Support for the flash FS will be in the next release of LabVIEW for ARM.

[Claire_Reid]

Hey Ben and Gmg,

I am also looking at the manual...here is the link.

[Gmg]

Good news! 

If you want to take the C node method,  I found some great examples that show you how to do this.  

http://www.standardics.nxp.com/support/documents/microcontrollers/zip/code.bundle.lpc23xx.lpc24xx.uv...

If you look in the EXTMEM folder you can find examples (in Microvision) for all the external memory on the MCB2400.  They also have a test program you can run to verify that the flash is prgorammed properly.

FYI, something that caught me when I was testing the external NAND...

There is a jumper labeled "P2.12<->NAND-RDY  that must be in place for this program to work.

Once you have these examples working, you can integrate it into LabVIEW by using C nodes.