Hi ,
I'm very new to the hardware engineering/debugging world and I found myself to like to purely dedicate myself to debug ARM and other similar chips. My main concern is with the materials needed. What do I need in the most simplest way to debug a chip that I found on a router for example? I've looked at Bus Blaster which is a dedicated JTAG debugger but what else do I need?
Best,
GT
Debug a chip? You mean like reverse engineer it to figure out what its hardware is doing, or what its firmware is doing?
Start by getting a datasheet on the chip. That will lead you to the tools you need to do more.
I want to do both but more deeply into the firmware aspect of the item. I did my research on the arm chip I intend to debug and dump its firmware to further analyse it and possibly upload a custom fw . I just want something to read/write from the 5 pins of a piece of hardware that has the JTAG header.
You could look at this from Atmel
or search for the appropriate jtag device for the chip you are interested in.
You have a code listing for the device already? Downloading its compiled .hex format code won't help you much.
Insanely expensive. I'm thinking about using Bus Pirate with OpenOCD . Do I need a dev board such as one from the Arduino series , the Raspberry Pi or even the Beaglebone Black to connect it with Bus Pirate? . What do I need?
What chip are you interested in looking at? Lets start there.
Samsung s3c4500x01 ARM. I looked at the datasheet and the 5 pins are so small so I was looking for a possible jtag or uart header to connect to. I really doubt you need a different jtag debugger for each and every device that is being analysed .
The 2nd image represents the possible jtag pins but I really don't know how to identify them correctly. I'm not going to risk frying the board.
RiceKernelz:
dedicate myself to debug ARM and other similar chips
Presumably you aren't literally looking for hardware and firmware design bugs. What do you actually want to achieve? The more tangible you can make your answer, the more likely you are to get advice that helps you achieve it.
I want to be able to open any device, dump its firmware , analyze it and reverse engineer that file to unlock the limits that the manufacturers put on the device. Basically I want to make a custom fw but before that I need the tools to get to that stage.
How much do you know currently about how this type of hardware works, and how firmware running on it works? What you're trying to do would usually require several decades of experience to build up the knowledge and understanding needed to do this sort of thing, and even with that knowledge and understanding it would require a substantial investment of time and equipment.
Regarding how the hardware works , I have no idea. The firmware for the router can be possibly obtained from the internet through official updates and then disassembling will be up to if there's enough documentation. All I'm asking is for what kind of hardware that can read and write to the TDI,TCK,TDO,TMS,nTRST pins.
