Summary: The intent of this module is to describe the laboratory equipment and hardware setup at Rice University DSP Laboratory.
Each lab PC is equipped with a Texas Instrument TMS320C6211 DSK board. The DSK board is hooked to the parallel port of the PC running Windows 2000; the PC can control the DSK via the development environment called ``Code Composer Studio'' (CCS) developed by Texas Instrument. Currently we use CCS version 2.1. If you have your owlnet account, create the Samba password to log in to the machines. If you don't have an owlnet account, the TA will give you a username and password for local log in.
For analog signal input and output, the DSK board has a PCM3003 codec daughtercard mounted on the board. This board provides 16 bit stereo analog input and output channels at maximum sampling rate of 48kHz. Currently, the jumpers on the board are configured to provide a fixed 48kHz sampling rate both for input and output. Do not change the jumper settings unless you know what you are doing. For variable sampling rates, the timers of the C6211 processor can be used to generate appropriate clock signal. You will learn how to use the CPU timers in Lab 4.
Each lab station is equipped with a function generator to provide signal to be used to test your signal-processing algorithms and an oscilloscope to display the processed waveforms.
The source analog signal also can be generated using the soundcard of the PC and input to the DSK board for processing. There are two shareware softwares installed on each PC that enables you to use the sound card as a tone generator and a simple spectrum analyzer. In the lab experiments, you will be using the tone generator to generate white noise input to the DSK board and you can watch the spectrum of the DSK output using the soundcard spectrum analyzer.
The TI DSK board is connected to the parallel port of the PC. The board requires external power supply connected to it. A speaker and microphone can be connected to the board via the two 3.5mm jacks mounted on the daughtercard that are connected to the PCM3003 codec. The hardware reset button (white) is on the DSK board to enable hardware reset of the board. When reset, the board goes through several steps of self testing and initialization. Please refer to the online help of the Code Composer Studio for detailed board operation. After each hardware reset, the DSK board tends to lose the connection with the host PC. Therefore, you should close the CCS before performing hardware reset. Be sure to save all the files before closing the CCS. After the DSK board finishes the reset, start the CCS again.
Be careful when you handle cables, tools, etc, not to short any circuits on the board.