Added a example serial terminal program for Linux

[mariohoff]

Tried the example first with minicom, which didn't get the bootloader interrupt in the beginning. Somehow I couldn't figure out uploading files with screen either. GTKTerm seems to work perfectly fine. Maybe this saves someone else 10-30 minutes of searching.

Also fixed a minor typo in the preceding sentence.

[stnolting]

Good Idea! Thanks for contributing! 👍

Btw, great timing! 😉
We just had the same issue with minicom on gitter https://gitter.im/neorv32/community?source=orgpage

[hipolitoguzman]

I have seen the same problem with minicom with the neorv32 in the iCEBreaker board. Minicom seems to corrupt any program bigger than 4k in size when uploading it to the bootloader. But when using a different terminal program, such as cutecom, everything works as expected.

It may be that the 'ascii' mode of minicom (which is the one that I was using) is corrupting the files? Minicom doesn't seem to have, by default, a 'binary' transfer mode. I can see here some files that allow to add this binary mode to minicom, but I haven't tried them: https://gist.github.com/cstrahan/5796653

[mariohoff]

Looks like my pull request was a bit quick. But thanks for merging anyways!
GTKTerm works perfectly fine, but only for the blinky sketch, which is under 4k of size. Everything bigger than that fails because GTKTerm has this size limit for whatever reason here:
https://github.com/Jeija/gtkterm/blob/c14db185e93aa186db790cec58af3ec99b4f2459/src/serial.h#L32

I just downloaded GTKTerm and set that to and arbitrary value like
#define BUFFER_EMISSION (4096*8)
and then compiled it myself. This works fine. Maybe there is a better program somewhere for linux (or we fix GTKTerm)... i don't know

[stnolting]

It's good to have a Linux-world example for one terminal application. So I think it's fine to have that in the docs.

Maybe it is not the best idea to use the "raw" data mode to send the executable... I was thinking about implementing an actual terminal protocol like XMODEM, which is supported by a wide range of terminal applications. But I am not sure about that.

Anyway, maybe we should add a node regarding this buffer size issue to the documentation.

[msaufyrohmad]

do this problem with minicom solved? i also having ERR_CHKS on binary more than 4kb

[stnolting]

Hey @msaufyrohmad!

I do not think this problem is solved - at least not on the minicom side. Hence, I highly recommend to use a different terminal program. Luckily, there are lots of them out there. 😉

[msaufyrohmad]

yes i am using cutecom and all binaries can be send and execute now. thnks

…

On Thu, Jun 1, 2023 at 2:43 AM stnolting ***@***.***> wrote: Hey @msaufyrohmad <https://github.com/msaufyrohmad>! I do not think this problem is solved - at least not on the minicom side. Hence, I highly recommend to use a different terminal program. Luckily, there are lots of them out there. 😉 — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#215 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AFLYIQMY2VLPTZHCOLGPSJLXI6GL5ANCNFSM5IROXQ2Q> . You are receiving this because you were mentioned.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[stnolting]

Very good choice 😉

[mlapaj]

I'm using Linux Picocom program
My shell command is (maybe someone else will be intrested):
sudo picocom /dev/ttyUSBx -b 19200 --send-cmd="ascii-xfr -s -n"
To send file you need to press ctrl+a and then ctrl+s and type file name.
Using this method, I have uploaded hello app and successfully executed it.

One more thing:
I spent a lot of time with getting ERR_EXE. I thought that issue is with terminal. Ultimately, I realized that I`m loading wrong binary file (main.bin instead of neorv32_raw_exe.bin) . My suggestion is to mention something about it in guide and also in datasheet where ERR_EXE is described (for example to check if header magic is correct). It will reduce time on investigation whats wrong.

Anyway, i have successfully ran hello world example.
Thanks Stnolting for this project.

[stnolting]

Thanks for the information!

My suggestion is to mention something about it in guide and also in datasheet where ERR_EXE is described (for example to check if header magic is correct). It will reduce time on investigation whats wrong.

Good point. I know that quite a lot people struggle with this (myself included) 😅