Debugging hardware is hard
blog.supermechanical.com
Debugging hardware is hard
1–10 of 32 posts
Re: Debugging hardware is hard
#2As someone who is interested In hardware engineering and reverse engineering....this truly is an understatement.
I have an old router I wanted to dump the firmware from as a learning experience to see if I could go from firmware dumping to finding a bug.
You got to constantly question if its your hardware or the device that's faulty....you got to double check and make sure everything is connected.
Want to do low level silicon reverse engineering? Yeah that's not cheap as the tool, chemicals, and PPE is very expensive.
But I'd argure I shouldn't treat the hardware world as magic. And with how expensive these devices are, some of it being justified, other times a company just sets insane markup on items like nvidia, its reasonable to want to learn how this stuff works and how one could do it themselves.
This hardware reverse engineering is also how we find/look for potential security issues or backdoors.
Re: Debugging hardware is hard
#3Someone else had a similar issue 6 years ago https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/334012/hsi-a...
It sounds like the sampling clock frequency is not what is expected (but that's quite easy to check based on the transmitted signal so I'm quite confused)
UARTs are nice if you are constrained on pins but SPI is always a safer bet where you don't have the necessary high accuracy clocks.
Re: Debugging hardware is hard
#4It would be incredibly useful to output the user clock and monitor it with a logic analyzer.
Re: Debugging hardware is hard
#5I enjoyed reading through your debugging process and as someone who has been trying to debug a custom board for a few weeks now I feel your pain. I still cannot say that my issue is hardware, firmware, or software -_-
I do have some UART devices that really seem to like when I just disconnect and reconnect the GND wire when they start to act up.
Re: Debugging hardware is hard
#6Great writeup! You show things are difficult to debug even when you have a board where all of your signals of interest are easily accessible.
It's a bad week when you have a bug that only is reproducible on form-factor hardware. Imagine something like a tiny earbud where the only pin accessible while the device is assembled is a single UART (bidirectional) pin? Ouch. Then, if you can manage to disassemble the earbud - the PCBs are usually so small most signals never appear on the outer layers - so you can't probe them even if you want to! Oh, and the issue is only appearing on one out of every few thousand earbuds? Better not break your failing unit while taking it apart! Good luck!
Just watched the Kickstarter video too -- looks like a great product y'all! Best of luck :)
Re: Debugging hardware is hard
#7True, dat.
My first job, was as a bench tech for an RF/microwave manufacturer (defense).
I think that experience made me a much better debugger, when I switched to software.
A lot of my work was analog (Spectrum Analyzers, Oscilloscopes, Signal Generators, etc.), but we also did a lot of digital debugging.
One of the coolest tools we had, was what was called an "ICE" (In-Circuit Emulator).
You yanked out the processor, and plugged in the ICE, and it replaced the processor. You could view everything going on, inside the processor, registers, accumulators, the whole kitchen sink.
These days, it would be impossible to make an ICE for current processors (although AI-assisted design might give us some surprises).
A lot of issues came about, at the intersection of analog and digital. Ringing could wreak havoc on digital buses, and, in those days, we weren't as good at handling GHz frequencies, as we are now. Every solder burr would become a microwave broadcast antenna.
Re: Debugging hardware is hard
#8True, dat. My first job, was as a bench tech for an RF/microwave manufacturer (defense). I think that experience made me a much better debugger, when I switched to software. A lot of my work was analog (Spectrum Analyzers, Oscilloscopes, Signal Generators, etc.), but we also did a lot of digital debugging. One of the coolest tools we had, was what was called an "ICE" (In-Circuit Emulator). You yanked out the processo…
Why is it impossible to make an ICE for current processors? Just because they're too complex and/or data exfiltration at speed is too hard?
Re: Debugging hardware is hard
#9True, dat. My first job, was as a bench tech for an RF/microwave manufacturer (defense). I think that experience made me a much better debugger, when I switched to software. A lot of my work was analog (Spectrum Analyzers, Oscilloscopes, Signal Generators, etc.), but we also did a lot of digital debugging. One of the coolest tools we had, was what was called an "ICE" (In-Circuit Emulator). You yanked out the processo…
Why is it impossible to make an ICE for current processors? Just because they're too complex and/or data exfiltration at speed is too hard?
They run at GHz frequencies, and are orders of magnitude more complex than the 8-bit processors of yore. ICEs were big suckers, and they cost a great deal.
That was for linear-socket, Sub-MHz-clocked, 8-bit processors, like the 8085.
Re: Debugging hardware is hard
#10What are those PCB holders he is using?