MPC8272ADS stability issues

Hi all,

I have a question that is a bit off topic here, but you seem the most
knowledgable people to ask so please don't flame me... :)

I am using an MPC8272ADS development board.  I was wondering if
anybody on this list experienced hardware reliability problems with
this platform.

I am running ELDK 3.1.1.  I have seen the kernel hang several times,
and a Oops a few times too.  The reason I suspect that this is a
hardware problem is that these seem to happen at completely random
times, and the Oopses, in random places.  It doesn't seem to make
any difference whether I have any of my own modules loaded or not, and
I've even seen these problems occur in the bootloader.

I'm hoping for an answer along the lines of "Ah, you must have the
'fail randomly' dip switch set!"

TIA,

Alex

Alex Zeffertt wrote:

Hi all,

I have a question that is a bit off topic here, but you seem the most
knowledgable people to ask so please don't flame me... :)

I am using an MPC8272ADS development board.  I was wondering if
anybody on this list experienced hardware reliability problems with
this platform.

I am running ELDK 3.1.1.  I have seen the kernel hang several times,
and a Oops a few times too.  The reason I suspect that this is a
hardware problem is that these seem to happen at completely random
times, and the Oopses, in random places.  It doesn't seem to make
any difference whether I have any of my own modules loaded or not, and
I've even seen these problems occur in the bootloader.

I'm hoping for an answer along the lines of "Ah, you must have the
'fail randomly' dip switch set!"

Unfortunately, low stability occasionally follows this boards. I have the same symptoms, and it is relative to something wrong with memory.

The mtest utility run in U-Boot will follow to crash or hang sooner or later. Hence its either broken memory or some hidden setting (probably undocumented) that the bootloader forgot to tweak in the time of memory controller init.

That question has been forwarded to FS, but still no response from them in this regard.

All I can suggest is to replace the board if it crashes more frequently than debug/development could proceed.

TIA,

Alex
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-- 
Sincerely,
Vitaly

Hi Alex,

We've had increasing difficulty with our MPC8272ADS board as well.  It
will often hang or reboot while just sitting at the U-Boot prompt, or
while running Linux.  I've pretty much given up trying to use our board.
One of these days we'll get around to shipping it back to Freescale....

In a perverse sort of way, I'm glad I'm not the only one seeing this
problem, but it's unfortunate that any of us are...


Walt


On Fri, 2005-11-25 at 18:51 +0300, Vitaly Bordug wrote:

Alex Zeffertt wrote:

quoted

I am using an MPC8272ADS development board.  I was wondering if
anybody on this list experienced hardware reliability problems with
this platform.

Unfortunately, low stability occasionally follows this boards. I have
the same symptoms, and it is relative to something wrong with memory.

On Fri, Nov 25, 2005 at 06:51:25PM +0300, Vitaly Bordug wrote:

Unfortunately, low stability occasionally follows this boards. I have the 
same symptoms, and it is relative to something wrong with memory.

Yeah, I wasn't able to do any development on my 8272ADS due to 
the same stability problems. Sometimes I wonder how Freescale can even 
ship hw of such "quality".

-- 
Eugene

Thanks everybody.  I was hoping to hear that others had seen this
problem and that it is probably hardware, not software.

My ADS is just about stable enough to use for development till our
custom hardware arrives, at which point - hopefully - the problems
will disappear!

Alex