Using the debug interface with linux

Introduction

Make sure to always remove the battery before attaching the watch module to the debug interface!
Be aware that you can easily overwrite your information memory where some calibration data which is unique to your device has been placed by the factory. It is recommended to take a backup of that memory area as your first step and sore that at a safe place.

The debug interface (one of the USB devices that comes with the watch) can be used to

• erase and write the flash memory
• read the flash memory
• debug running programs
  • run a program step by step
  • run and stop at specified break points
  • see the state of CPU registers
  • see the content of the RAM
  • manipulate RAM or CPU registers

Running a gdb proxy

There are many sources on the Internet that suggest the use of the ti_usb_3410_5052 kernel module with the debug interface. This is not necessary (and likely not even possible, at least I found no way to make it work). Instead the user space program MSPDebug can be used which communicates with the debug interface through libusb.
You need to have the permission to write to the usb device ID 0451:f432 .
The build of MSPDebug is very simple and the program can be run from anywhere (no need to do “make install”).
When run with “mspdebug rf2500” the program should attach to the debug interface and if the watch module is connected you get some information about the debug interface and the attached micro controller. In this case
Device ID: 0×6137
Device: CC430F6137

What follows is a list of available commands, some really short usage instruction and you are on the command line and ready to go.
The most important commands here are

• prog : write the content of to memory. This can be *.elf files or memory content in Intel-HEX or TI-HEX. The main flash memory always gets erased, you also have to rewrite main flash memory even when you only want to rewrite the information memory. Information memory and BSL memory are not erased unless you try to rewrite them.
• hexout : dump memory content to hex file (as Intel-HEX). Take a look at the users guide to find out what memory areas are available (“hexout 0×1800 512 infomem.hex” dumps the content of the information memory to a file named infomem.hex)
• reset : clear RAM and reset all CPU registers
• run :
• gdb : run in GDB proxy mode to allow connection by msp430-gdb or msp430-insight from the mspgcc4 project

Interactive debugging can better be done with the Insight GUI instead of the mspdebug command line.
Be aware of the maximum number of three breakpoints. Even if you can add more in a debugger that uses the mspdebug proxy, mspdebug will refuse to run with too many breakpoints set

compiling msp430-gdb and msp430-insight

using msp430-insight together with the proxy to debug interactively

what does not work properly

• downloading of code to the watch, do it directly from mspdebug command line
• running freely (klicking the “run” icon), msp430-insight might become unresponsive
• changing to a different program (e.g. newly compiled after a change in code) without restarting Insight
• answer “Yes” to “Make breakpoint pending on future shared library load?” makes Insight crash