Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] gnuradio on FreeBSD 8.x

[mleech]

On Mon, 16 Jan 2012 14:49:20 -0600, LRK wrote:

UHD needs to make certain that the FPGA image is compatible with the parameters supplied, so I *think* and Josh can confirm, that it reloads the FPGA imagee very time, although it doesn't reload the FX2 firmware every time.

I wrote build-gnuradio specifically to help deal with the "I just want to look at signals" issues that people were having (and because it was very convenient for me). Nothing stopping *someone* with *BSD experience and motivation from doing a build-gnuradio variant for *BSD.  But most of the folks involved in Gnu Radio use a Linux variant, so naturally, Linux is better supported.

Hardware-specific stuff has been slowly being decoupled from Gnu Radio for a couple of years.  UHD has been around for that long, and is basically a separate package from Gnu Radio proper. And within UHD, the pre-built firmware/FPGA images are also separate.  Again, build-gnuradio knows where to get them, and where to install them--for Ubuntu and Fedora.

Unless there's a horrible bug in std::ifstream on FreeBSD, then it really *did* find that .rbf file where it claims to have found it, and pushed it down to the USRP1.

 

> On Mon, Jan 16, 2012 at 03:20:54PM -0500, address@hidden wrote:
>
> The USRP1 absolutely requires that the
> firmware be loaded every time it powers up, before it knows it's a USRP.
> Prior to that, the FX2 only knows how to load firmware. This has always
> been the case, even in "classic land" for the USRP1. So, USRP1 also
> maintained firmware images on the filesystem where it expected to find
> them. 
>
> While this is true, the USRP1 also did not need to be reloaded every time
> unless it was power down. Apparently the 3.2.2 load is not the same as
> the one for UHD.
>
>  
>
> UHD keeps these at {prefix} (/usr/local on Linux)
> uhd/share/images. 
>
> Sure, after the GnuRadio user finds and installs them. I want to look
> at signals and munge some bits, not learn installation intracies.
>
>  
> The firmware/FPGA images for USRP1 haven't changed
> in a long time, although there are multiple ones, for different
> configurations. For example 8-bit with 16Msps requires the "4rx" image
> to be loaded. 
>
> So why is the old firmware not okay? Up until sdcc was 'upgraded' to
> 3.0, the USRP1 firmware was built and installed by gnuradio. The user
> did not have to find anything on websites or specify the file unless
> it was other than the default.
>
>  
> What happens if you use: 
>
> uhd_usrp_probe --args
> "type=usrp1" 
>
> FreeBSD 8; GNU C++ version 4.2.2 20070831 prerelease [FreeBSD]; Boost_104500; UH
> D_003.004.000-1424488
>
> -- Opening a USRP1 device...
> -- Loading FPGA image: /usr/home/gr/gr352/usrp1_fpga.rbf... done
> -- Using FPGA clock rate of 64.000000MHz...
> ............
>
>
> Interesting that it claims to have found the .rbf file in a place where
> it does not exist. :)
>
> Why does uhd_find_devices install one file and not the other?