TS-7300 Software Features

1.69s Linux Fastboot and Linux Bootloader

The TS-7300 features a fastboot up firmware that allows Linux to boot in under to secods. To learn more about this visit the Linux Fastboot page.

Prior to booting into Debian(third partition) the initial ramdisk will check for /vmlinux.bin on the third partition. If this file is found it will be loaded into memory(0x00218000) and used as the new kernel. Once the kernel is loaded the boot process will proceed and Debian will be used as the root filesystem. For more information please see Linux Boots Linux with Linux Bootloader page .

SD Card High-Security Features

Technologic Systems has developed a Linux application named "sdlock" which can be used to manipulate SD card hardware-enforced password locks and set the card's permanent write-protect feature. Learn more about this feature by visiting the SD Card High-Security Features webapge.

Software Update via USB Flash Drive in Factory Configuration

Although Technologic Systems can load the flash with customer supplied software from the factory, it is often more convenient to have a local production process for installing or updating the files and programs that make your product unique. The default software installation enables this by providing a hook to allow customer code to "hijack" the normal fast-boot bootup process. The default linuxrc will run a program "/bin/check-usb-update" in the background after bootup has completed. This program looks for a script "/tsinit" on the USB mass storage device (USB thumb-drive, or USB hard drive) connected to the bottom USB slot. If this script exists, it is then run automatically as the Linux "root" user-ID. A sample /tsinit script that copies a program "myprogram" to onboard flash. #!/bin/sh

mount /dev/mtdblock/3 /onboardflash
cp /mnt/root/myprogram /onboardflash/bin
umount /onboardFlash
save
reboot

While the "tsinit" script is run, the red LED will be on. After it is complete, the red LED will go off. A customer could mass-update many hundreds of boards easily by using a USB flash dongle with a custom "tsinit" and data files and applying power with the USB dongle on, wait for the LED to go off, then proceed to the next board. The "tsinit" script will begin to execute approximately 3 seconds after power-on.

Hardware Control Through Linux Shell Scripts

Technologic Systems provide a package of shell functions which enable control to some of the TS-7000 hardware functions without having to write/compile C code. These shell functions allow you to access various functions such as DIO, ADCs and so forth from the command line or in your own shell scripts. The ts7xxx.subr file, which includes the implementation of all shell functions, is available at:

• ts7xxx.subr Linux shell script

There are two new commands added to the provided TS busybox to support these shell functions. These commands are "peekpoke" which is used to provide direct access to memory, and ADCread, which will provide a continuous stream of analog to digital readings (either on one channel or all channels) to stdout in text format. Both of these commands provide more info on what options are available if you type them without any arguments.

The Shell Functions include:

• dio_dir_get <n>: get the current direction (0=input,1=output) of DIO #n
• dio_dir_set <n> <dir>: set the direction of DIO #n to the specified direction (0=input,1=output)
• dio_data_get <n>: get the current value (0=Low,1=High) of DIO #n
• dio_data_set <n> <val>: set the current value (0=Low,1=High) of DIO #n (specified pin should be set to be an output already)
• usb_init: call this function to turn the USB ports on and initialize them
• usb_off: call this function to turn off the USB ports
• usb_numports: prints the number of USB ports on the board. this may be greater then the actual number of physical ports. the first port is port 0
• usb_port_devexists <port>: prints '1' if something is plugged into the specified port, or '0' otherwise.
• eth_off: turns off the ethernet port and phy
• eth_on: turns on the ethernet port and phy
• led0 <state>: sets the state of the green LED (0=OFF,1=ON)
• led1 <state>: sets the state of the red LED (0=OFF,1=ON)
• cpu_speed_max: set the CPU and bus speed to their maximum (normal) values, e.g. 200Mhz/100Mhz.
• cpu_speed_166: set the CPU speed to 166Mhz and the bus speed to 66Mhz.
• cpu_speed_42: set the CPU speed and bus speed to 41.5Mhz. This is the slowest speed that Ethernet will work at.
• cpu_speed_min: set the CPU and bus speed to their minimum values (14.7456Mhz)
• temp_read: returns the current Celsius temperature reading from the TMP124 chip.

For further information, contact a Technologic Systems engineer.