CCS and MSP430F541xA issues [SOLVED]

[RobG 1,892]

I am running into some problems with CCS. I have a program that is under 5k and uses ~1200 bytes of RAM.

When I increase couple of arrays by about 200 bytes, the program compiles but then it does not let me debug.

It appears to be running, but it isn't (see attached pic.)

 

Clearly, there's some kind of limit here, but what?

I had code size limited version of CCS, so I have activated my license (after 2 years ,) it's a full version now.

I have tried F5418A and F5419A, same results, LaunchPad and FET430UIF, still same results.

 

[bluehash 1,581]

I have CCS5, if you want me to test it on it. 

[RobG 1,892]

I did a simple test program with large array and it worked.

Will try to upgrade to CCS6 and see if that will do the trick.

[RobG 1,892]

Installed CCS6, same thing. Installed CCS4, it works! Go figure.

[RobG 1,892]

Found the problem (thanks to Jens-Michael Gross from e2e.)

 

As it turns out, _auto_init was taking too long and WDT was resetting MCU before debugger could get to main breakpoint.

 

Adding _system_pre_init and disabling WDT before _auto_init fixed my issue.

int _system_pre_init( void )
{
   WDTCTL = WDTPW | WDTHOLD;
   return 1;
}

[bluehash 1,581]

Compilers acting differently?

[RobG 1,892]

asm produced by CCS4 is different than the one from CCS5.

Also, there's a setting in CCS that will hold WDT during cinit, but I cannot find it in CCS5.4 (was it removed?)

More about it here:

http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/MSP430_FAQ#WDT_fires_during_C_startup_code

[RobG 1,892]

There's another way

 

CCS (I am not sure if I should use .TI.noinit, but using .noinit or any other section does not work)

#pragma DATA_SECTION(myVar, ".TI.noinit");
unsigned char myVar[2][512];

IAR

__no_init unsigned char myVar[2][512]; 

mspgcc (see pabigot's note 2 posts below)

unsigned int myVar[2][512] __attribute__ ((section(".noinit")));

[bluehash 1,581]

Thanks @RobG 

May avoid some hair pulling in the future.

[pabigot 355]

 

mspgcc (not sure about .noinit, see CCS example)

unsigned int myVar[2][512] __attribute__ ((section(".noinit")));

 

This works, but is unnecessary on mspgcc: the C runtime (CRT) code that zeroes bss and copies statically initialized data resets the watchdog while it's working.  The watchdog is also reset between each static constructor or destructor call.

 

You can also globally disable the watchdog with -mdisable-watchdog, in which case it's disabled before any of the CRT stuff gets going.