Xtm Support Tool V0.4c

[Zee Petty]

IARPA Babel Cantonese Language Pack IARPA-babel101b-v0.4c was developed by Appen for the IARPA (Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity) Babel program. It contains approximately 215 hours of Cantonese conversational and scripted telephone speech collected in 2011 along with corresponding transcripts.

The Babel program focuses on underserved languages and seeks to develop speech recognition technology that can be rapidly applied to any human language to support keyword search performance over large amounts of recorded speech.

The Cantonese speech in this release represents that spoken in the Chinese provinces of Guangdong and Guangxi, and within those provinces, among five dialect groups. The gender distribution among speakers is approximately even; speakers' ages range from 16 years to 67 years. Calls were made using different telephones (e.g., mobile, landline) from a variety of environments including the street, a home or office, a public place, and inside a vehicle.

All audio data is presented as 8kHz 8-bit a-law encoded audio in sphere format. Transcripts are available in two versions: simplified Chinese characters and a romanization scheme based on the Yale system, both encoded in UTF-8. Further information about transcription methodology is contained in the documentation accompanying this release.

I think a great place to start - from a learning perspective - is to look at the some of the SPI examples for the Launchpad. This device has a relatively simple register map, so if you can get a SPI example program running in C or with TI's energia system, then you can start trying to write to the DAC channels. If you do not have much experience with microcontrollers or C, then I suggest you start with Energia. Energia is a IDE platform design for educating students and hobbyist on microcontroller fundamentals - so its a fun way to dive in to the hardware. In addition, if you have access to logic analyzer or an oscilloscope you should be able to debug any issues very quickly. The Saleae logic analyzers are relatively inexpensive and it is good tool to own.

DAC12xSxxxEVM_FW_v0.87.zipOk, I do not think that the MSP-EXP430FR6989 supports the USB BSL feature that the program is trying to use. The Launchpad lacks a BSL button, which should be pressed while powering the device. I believe the EVM uses the MSP-EXP430F5529LP instead. I have attached the original CCS project, you can try to adapt the code to the 6989 if you like. Or you can try it with the 5529 Launchpad. Finally, I would like to reiterate that this EVM software is very basic, and mostly just allows the user to write to the DAC registers directly. I think trying to implement a SPI example program and talking to the EVM would be a fun project. You could even use the demo I have attached as a starting point, though there is some other code in there to do the USB communication.

Now I have both DAC128S085EVM and MSP430F5529LP connected together, I opened the "MSP USB firmware upgrade example" software then I browsed for the file "7776.dac12xSxxx_fw-v0.87", after that I kept pressing S3 while connecting to the USB but no device detected, is there something I should do before doing this step?shall I put the "7776.dac12xSxxx_fw-v0.87" file in a specific folder?

Is this GUI enough to give me 8 dc analog signals? I tried the numbers there then I used the voltmeter but not all the pins has the same voltage. What is the difference between this GUI and programming the MSP430F5529 and connect it to the DAC through the spi? I mean in which case this GUI become useful?

Installation was pretty "easy". Downloaded Aorus Engine, newest Nvidia driver and new firmware for H2D (There was updated 2019/01/08 firmware. I am not sure did they update thunderbolt update tool since I used other trick)
The other way to update firmware without using older 16.2 TB App was to download other thunderbolt update tool. Credits to nomadiclizard at reddit! (used HDMI Firmware Update link: -HDMI-Firmware-Update-Tool-for-Intel-NUC-Kit-NUC7i3BN-NUC7i5BN-NUC7i7BN-NUC6CAY?product=95067)
With newer Thunderbolt FW Update Tool I just followed Aorus instructions to update Gaming Box. I updated succesfully with this method.

I founded out that in Aorus GTX 1070 Gaming Box firmware folder you had two different .bin files. You have to pick that bin file that matches your Gaming Box when you select controller/device at Thunderbolt FW Update Tool.
Also noticed that they messed up with naming Thunderbolt FW Update Tool as "Gaming box update guide.docx.exe".

I also tested Grand Theft Auto V with Internal and External screen. With Internal screen I got with normal settings Full HD (1920 x 1080) about 45-60fps while driving in Los Santos.
With External screen I tried with all settings High and game run pretty smoothly 60fps. I had kinda strange freezing issue while playing. Game froze suddenly but if I open my laptop screen game normally continued.
I also tested with windowed mode and game didn't freeze.

Comments

So I have been always really curious about EGPU and finally I have one! The X280 is excellent laptop for school study and at work since it is really small to carry, good battery and good performance.
Performance from Aorus GTX 1070 Gaming Box is good. It is small package to carry to other places and gives good boost to play games.
But for downside my Gaming Box has coil whine. After leds switch on same time starts coil whine which seems to cover fan noise. Has others had coil whine with Gaming Box?

While Gaming I can't much hear coil whine + fan noise from Gaming Box since X280 fan is also making noise and my Bose Companion 20 has good sounds to cover both Gaming Box and X280 noise. After all I am happy about current setup!

While writing this topic I had today problem that my computer had lost Nvidia drivers. I used DDU to delete drivers and reinstalled and got Gaming Box to work again. I also selected that Windows should not update drivers (not sure if that helps).

@ville_tuominen Thank you for sharing this build guide! I'm curious to learn more about the HDMI Firmware Update tool and how it helps with firmware flashing on the eGPU enclosure. I wish Lenovo had not used a x2 PCIe lane connection for the Thunderbolt 3 port on this ThinkPad X280.

So as nomadiclizard says Gigabyte/Aorus were using old version of FwUpdateTool.exe which only work with older Thunderbolt drivers (16.2). If you get newer version of FwUpdateTool.exe you can update your Aorus firmware without downgrading Thunderbolt drivers. But I still don't know that has Aorus/Gigabyte updated FwUpdateTool.exe since there is currently at their support website new version of firmware for Gaming Box.

I completed a C-to-MIPS conversion for a class, and I want to check it against the assembly. I have heard that there is a way of configuring GCC, so that it can convert C code to the MIPS architecture rather than the x86 architecture (my computer users an Core i5 processor) and prints the output.

If you're going to post that, at least refer me to instructions. GCC came with Ubuntu. I don't have experience on how to install compilers and it's not easy finding online tutorials for anything other than GCC. Then there's the case of cross-compiling I need to know about as well.

GCC can produce assembly code for a large number of architectures, include MIPS. But what architecture a given GCC instance targets is decided when GCC itself is compiled. The precompiled binary you will find in an Ubuntu system knows about x86 (possibly both 32-bit and 64-bit modes) but not MIPS.

Compiling GCC with a target architecture distinct from the architecture on which GCC itself will be running is known as preparing a cross-compilation toolchain. This is doable but requires quite a bit of documentation-reading and patience; you usually need to first build a cross-assembler and cross-linker (GNU binutils), then build the cross-GCC itself.

I recommend using buildroot. This is a set of scripts and makefiles designed to help with the production of a complete cross-compilation toolchain and utilities. At the end of the day, you will get a complete OS and development tools for a target system. This includes the cross-compiler you are after.

Another quite different solution is to use QEMU. This is an emulator for various processors and systems, including MIPS systems. You can use it to run a virtual machine with a MIPS processor, and, within that machine, install an operating system for MIPS, e.g. Debian, a Linux distribution. This way, you get a native GCC (a GCC running on a MIPS system and producing code for MIPS).

Note that the compiler explorer by default filters directives so you can just see the instructions, leaving out stuff like alignment, sections, .globl, and so on. (For a function with no global / static data, this is actually fine, especially when you just want to use a compiler to make an example for you. The default section is .text anyway, if you don't use any directives.)

Most people that want MIPS asm for homework are using SPIM or MARS, usually without branch-delay slots. (Unlike real MIPS, so you need to tweak the compiler to not take advantage of the next instruction after a branch running unconditionally, even when it's taken.) For GCC, the option is -fno-delayed-branch - that will fill every delay slot with a NOP, so the code will still run on a real MIPS. You can just manually remove all the NOPs.

There may be other tweaks needed, like MARS may require you to use jr $31 instead of j $31, Tweak mips-gcc output to work with MARS without using a script. And of course I/O code will have to be implemented using MARS's toy system calls, not jal calls to standard library functions like printf or std::ostream::operator

Unfortunately GCC doesn't have an option to use register names like $a0 instead of $r. For PowerPC there's -mregnames to use r1 instead of 1, but no similar option for MIPS to use "more symbolic" reg names.

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