The new flagship of FRDM boards is the FRDM-K64F board. After FTF I have explored different ways debugging the board, and received many comments and questions about it (thanks!). Freescale announced the supports with the new Eclipse based Kinetis Design Studio (KDS). But until KDS is out, how can I use the FRDM-K64F board with CodeWarrior?

Setup CodeWarrior for MCU v10.6

If you are using CodeWarrior for MCU10.5, there is a service pack for K64F available on the Freescale web site. I have it installed in my 10.5, and while this works, I rather recommend to download and install the latest MCU10.6 instead: It is available for download from http://www.freescale.com/cwmcu10.

Create New Project for FRDM-K64F

With File > New > Bareboard Project, create a new project for the K64F microcontroller on the board:

As connection select either P&E Multilink or Segger J-Link, or both:

❗ The FRDM-K64F does *not* have the (P&E) OpenSDA bootloader on it. Freescale changed the bootloader from the existing OpenSDA (I started naming it as OpenSDAv1) to a new (mbed bootloader based) OpenSDAv2. Existing *.SDA (e.g. P&E OpenSDAv1, Segger OpenSDAv1 or CMSIS-DAP OpenSDAv1) applications *cannot* be used with OpenSDAv2: instead of an .SDA file they need different firmware with .BIN extension.

SWD or JTAG?

There are two different ways to debug an ARM core: either with JTAG (Joint Test Access Group) or SWD(Single Wire Debug).

My cheat sheet if SWD or JTAG is used:

SWD:

1. SWD uses two pins (clock (SWDCLK) and bidirectional data (SWDIO))
2. On SWD, optionally there is SWO (Serial Wire Viewer)

With this, on the 10 pin connector beside GND and Reset the SWDIO and SWDCLK are needed (see http://infocenter.arm.com/help/topic/com.arm.doc.faqs/attached/13634/cortex_debug_connectors.pdf):

In JTAG mode, TMS, TCK, TDO and TDI (beside GND and Reset) are needed:

The 20pin connector has the same pin layout in the lower half, and the upper half has extra ETM trace pins:

Therefore, a debug cable with 20 pins can be put on a 10pin header (lower half) if no 10 pin cable is available. Most SWD/JTAG debug probes today offer both 10 pin and 20 pin cables:

I was wrong for a long time when I thought if a 20pin cable means JTAG, and a 10pin cable means SWD :-(. Instead, I need to check the schemata. For example the K20 on the FRDM-K64F is using JTAG:

But the K64F on the FRDM-K64F has SWD:

The K64F microcessor *could* use JTAG, but on the board only the SWD pins are routed to the connector.

💡 Not sure why Freescale decided only to route the SWD pins to the connector. Probably so the other pins could be used as normal pins.

FRDM-K64F Debug Connectors

The FRDM-K64F has three debug connections:

1. USB OpenSDAv2 through the onboard Kinetis K20
2. 10pin SWD connector for the Kinetis K20
3. 10pin SWD connector for the Kinetis K64F

CodeWarrior does *not* support OpenSDAv2, so I have to use option 3: Using an external debug probe like a P&E Multilink or Segger J-Link.

❗ Pay attention to use the connector to the K64F (not the one to the K20!), and make sure that the cable is oriented to pin 1 (the board silkscreen is so small that it is hard to read where is pin 1). Use above picture as orientation.

P&E Multilink Connection

Connect the P&E Multilink SWD cable to the K64F SWD connector as shown below:

💡 In above picture I’m using the OpenSDA USB debug port to power the board. Which power USB port I can use depends on the debug firmware loaded on the K20. My experiments show that above picture does *not* work if the mbed firmware is loaded on the OpenSDA, because the mbed firmware is affecting the debug connection pins to the K64F. If using the Segger J-Link firmware, then this firmware does it correctly and tristates the connections to the K64F if no active debug session is running.

Then I can debug the FRDM-K64F 🙂

Segger J-Link Connection

The Segger J-Link connects to the target like this:

Then I can debug the board with the Segger J-Link.

Trouble Shooting

SWD or JTAG?

If I get an error like this:

Failed to resume target process.
ARM GDI Protocol Adapter : An error occurred while trying to write memory. The Debugger can not write memory.

Then it means that the SWD/JTAG selection probably is wrong. I need to verify/change the settings in the debug configuration. Use the menu Run > Run Configurations and select the run/debug configuration. There I use the ‘Edit…’ button:

For the J-Link, the setting is in the ‘Debug port interface’ setting:

For the P&E Universal Mutilink the setting is in ‘Use SWD reduced pin protocol for communication’:

J-Link Firmware

The other thing is: make sure you are using the latest Segger J-Link Firmware (http://www.segger.com/jlink-software.html) and that you run the Segger J-Link updater (I’m using J-Link ARM V4.84c).

That way your Segger DLL’s installed (in IAR, Keil, CodeWarrior, …) get updated to the latest version.

Summary

It is possible to use the FRDM-K64F with CodeWarrior for MCU10.6, but it does not support the CMSIS-DAP interface: an external JTAG/SWD probe like the P&E Multilink or Segger J-Link is needed. But until the KDS is available, the board can be used with CodeWarrior. CodeWarrior for MCU10.6 is Windows only, while KDS supports Windows+Linux (Mac OS X later this year).

What could be the next article? Using Eclipse Kepler with the FRDM-K64F? Using a FRDM (e.g. FRDM-KL25Z) board to debug the FRDM-K64F? Post a comment and I see what I can do for you ;-).

Happy Freedoming 🙂