Installation

  1. You need a Windows XP, Server 2003 or Vista machine.
  2. Download the source downloads.htm.
  3. Unzip it into some directory, e.g. c:\inv.
  4. Open a command line window and cd into the place (e.g. c:\inv).
  5. Set the environment variable MMLITE_SDK to point to it. e.g. c:> set MMLITE_SDK=c:\inv
  6. Populate the tools directories that you need. This might be hard depending on the platforms you want to support but we cannot distribute the tools because of licensing issues. Arm can be built with Embedded Visual Studio, gcc, Arm 2.50 (evaluation copies come with some boards like AEB or it can be purchased from Arm), or ADS 1.1 or 1.2.

i386 is built using Visual Studio. Install it normally and open a command line window from START menu: All Programs/Microsoft Visual Studio 2005/Visual Studio Tools/ Visual Studio 2005 Command Prompt.

The mips port is built using gcc but might require some patches. The h8 builds with the Renesas tools. The PPC is compiled using the XBox SDK compiler.

  1. Ok, finally ready to build. There are a few batch files at the top level in the tree. They run the proper make commands. mkall.bat compiles all the source in all the configurations for all platforms, one at a time. Look into it for individual nmake command lines (note that Unicode is currently tested on i386 only). mkdoc.bat webifies the sources and generates the reference manual you see on this web site.
  2. Either run mkall.bat or a selected line from within it (or compile from Visual Studio, see the last bullet). Just nmake will build for i386. All target platforms that share the same CPU will be built at once. If you want to see what's going on set _VERBOSE to one. E.g. nmake _VERBOSE=1 TARGETCPU=arm TARGETTYPE=debug TOOLS=gnu
  3. If everything works out, all the build results go into build. E.g. c:\inv\build. There is a subdirectory for each cpu compiler pair, and under that a subdirectory for each configuration (debug/release). Under that bin has the actual output. The name of the system image file depends on the platform. E.g. c:\inv\build\i386\debug\bin\ntubig.exe would contain an image that can be run as a sub-process under Windows XP/Vista. It emulates a real system, including scheduler and networking. Another version is called winbig.exe and it uses windows threads and sockets and is thus easier to debug but further from a real embedded system.
  4. To run the emulator cd into the directory and run ntubig.exe. To run it under Visual Studio, cd into c:\inv\build\i386\debug\bin and run devenv ntubig.exe
  5. To get ethernet access, run src\drivers\net\packet\lib\i386\Setup.exe to install a virtual NIC driver. Follow the installation dialogs. I you have the Microsoft Virtual PC software installed then you can skip this step.
  6. For an eb63 board follow the instructions in atmel.htm. What needs to be done on other platforms depends on the platform. The runable image usually has the platform name somehow encoded into it, look in conf\package\makefile.

 

A great tool for simulating various hardware platforms is the Giano simulator. Take a look at http://research.microsoft.com/research/EmbeddedSystems/Giano/giano.aspx.

 

 

OLD (Obsolete) instructions that may be still useful for using old tools can be used in various places of the documentation above. The tools are fortunately generally getting easier to use so we need less steps. Knock knock.

 

  1. If necessary, install the newest XML 4.0 parser from MSDN download site.
    If you are running Windows 2000, you may need to install the newest MSI install package first.
  2.  i386 is built using Visual Studio. Install it normally and run vcvars32.bat that comes with the compiler to set environment variables that tell the makefiles where to find the compiler. If you can't find vcvars32 search for it: C:\>dir/s/b vcvars32.bat
  3. VS7 includes all the necessary header files. With an older version you will also need the "Build environment" from the Platform Core SDK. To set the required MSSDK environment variable, run setenv.bat that comes with the SDK: C:\>"C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDK\setenv.bat"
  4.  The best I can do for some tools is to provide a list with the files that might be needed. See the directory listing.
  1. Make sure nmake.exe is in the path. nmake comes with Visual Studio (Visual C++).
  2. In older versions of Visual Studio, use msdev instead of devenv to debug.
  3. You can also build from the integrated environment in Visual Studio. On the toolbar click "File", select "Open Workspace", select "MMLite.dsw" in c:\inv. Click "Open". Build by e.g. "Batch Build" under "Build". Note that the environment variable MMLITE_SDK still needs to be set. Either set it on the command line: "set MMLITE_SDK=c:\inv RET msdev.exe RET" or set it using the Control Panel (System, Adavanced, Environment Variables, New) after which you can run msdev from the Start menu.