NERP Tonight — JTAG on the Brain

Electric_hair_curler / Brain-Machine Interface

NERP is not exclusively Raspberry Pi, the small computer and embedded systems interest group at Pumping Station:One in Chicago. NERP meets every other Monday at 7pm at Pumping Station:One, 3519 N. Elston Ave. in Chicago.

Electric_hair_curler / Brain-Machine Interface

Joao (“Gamblit” on the PS1 mailing list) will give an introduction to JTAG at NERP on Monday. JTAG is an important tool for embedded developers, manufacturers, and hardware hackers who do reverse engineering. The JTAG interface is included in all but the smallest processors. For use in degugging, JTAG provides real-time read/write access to a chip’s cpu, i/o systems, ram, and mass storage. It gives a user live access points inside a running cpu from which they can take over its brain, or just burn a fresh rom.

Physically, JTAG consists of a small set of pins on a microprocessor, a hardware interface device, a cable connected to a host computer, and a (not physical) protocol. JTAG is most generally useful for programming the flash in embedded controllers. That much is simple. The rest, of course is software.

Joao’s tools and target will include:

– Linux Host (Fedora VM)
– GDB (GNU Debugger) and DDD as debuggers
– No IDE (VIM and direct GCC if I need it)
– Olimex USB JTAG and TIAO USB generic interface
– Olimex Atmega128 board (Atmel Atmega128 MCU)

Joao says:
I’ll be talking about flash programming and debugging software running on a
micro-controller. I’ll also be showing that it can read and set
micro-controller pins but not getting into depth about how that actually
works, as that would need some additional low-level explanation. Depending
on feedback and available time I might explore a bit of it.
Find NERP and Pumping Station:One at
http://www.meetup.com/NERP-Not-Exclusively-Raspberry-Pi/
and
https://pumpingstationone.org/
Doors open at 6:30pm. The next meeting is October
13th, 2014.

NERP is free and open to the public.
Ed Bennett ed @ kinetics and electronics com
Tags: electronics, embedded, NERP, Open Source,
raspberry pi, hackerspace, Beagle Bone, Element14, Pumping
Station One

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