Hello,

I am new to openmsp430 and its software developments tools. I am trying to use the openmsp430 mini debug tool. I am having trouble connecting to my board (via serial interface) with the mini debug.

On the debugger all it shows is �connection problem�. But on my tcl shell, it shows the following.

WARNING: the XML alias file was not found - C:\Tcl\omsp_alias.xml

ERROR: cpu_id not valid: 0x00000000

!!!! Make sure that you are properly connected to the board !!!!
!!!! or try resetting the serial debug interface (or CPU) !!!!

I have copied the omsp_alias.xml file from the openmsp430 repository. I am guessing that I need to add the configuration of my board to this file. Is that correct?

Can you please provide some insight into what I may be missing, and what the proper procedure is to use the mini debugger and to troubleshoot the issues with it.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Hi Svaze,

sorry for the late answer.
Somehow the forum email notification has been running wild lately... I only saw your post today :-/

The XML file is only here to customize the messages displayed by the minidebugger once your chip has been identified (for example, you might want to replace a 0x1234 ID with a cooler name).
So don't worry if the XML file is missing, it won't prevent your system from working.

Now, the real problem really comes from the fact that the physical connection from your PC to the openMSP430 core is not working.
The problems could have several sources but the very first thing you should make sure of is that the openMSP430 core itself is working (i.e. that you didn't make any connectivity mistake in your implementation, that the clock is running, ...).
For that, I would recommend you to setup a small simulation environment so that you can see what's going on inside your FPGA.

Cheers,
Olivier