PowerPC questions

["Anthony Tonizzo" <atonizzo at lycos dot com>]

Hi:

During the weekend I had to port eCos to a new platform based on the
PowerPC. Since eCos wanted to fight, I had to step through the whole
initialization sequence, and in the process, I came across a something
that need clarification, plus something downright misterious.

The clarification regards the some code that deals with the allocation 
of the buffer descriptors used by the rs-232 device. This is in quicc_smc1.c
and it looks something like this (for the RX buffers, but for the TX it
is more of the same...):

uart_pram->rbase = _mpc8xx_allocBd(sizeof(struct cp_bufdesc)*info->Rxnum + info->Rxnum);

What I do not understand here is the "+ info->Rxnum". If we have to 
allocate Rxnum buffer descriptors, each 8 bytes long, the the only
thing needed is the number of buffer secriptors to allocate time the
length of a buffer descriptor.

This makes sure that the value passed is a multiple of 8 (the size of a
buffer descriptor ). The extra addition of "info->Rxnum" also creates an 
issue inside

_mpc8xx_allocBd()      //     (in file cpm.c)

since there is an ASSERT() if the value passed is not a multiple of 8. If
we add "info->Rxnum" to the length of the area to allocate we are sure to 
catch the assertion (unless we need 8 buffer descriptors.) The _mpc8xx_allocBd() 
goes on to normalize the length to a multiple of 8 with something like this:

len = (len + 7) & ~7;  // Multiple of 8 bytes

So isn't it more correct like this:

uart_pram->rbase = _mpc8xx_allocBd(sizeof(struct cp_bufdesc)*info->Rxnum);

in quicc_smc1.c and then

// Only if the length is not a multiple of 8...
if ( len & 7 )  
    len = (len & 7) + sizeof(struct cp_bufdesc);  

in smc.c?

The whole thing is pretty puzzling, because Rxnum is 4, and so the assertion
should be caught every time. Yet I have never had any issue with this
with my MBX board. Evidently I am missing something.

The second thing I find totally misterious happens in redboot.c. This is
where my BSP currently fails, and I need to understand what is going on. 
The code is this:

for (init_entry = __RedBoot_INIT_TAB__; init_entry != &__RedBoot_INIT_TAB_END__;  init_entry++) {
    (*init_entry->fun)();
}

There are no comments in the code, so any wisdom is appreciated. What does 
this code do? What are the items of the init_entry structure? O tried to 
look around the file, but I got nowhere.

Thanks
Anthony Tonizzo


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