Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2011 10:02:31 +1000 Subject: Re: U-boot for Pentium From: graeme.russ@gmail.com To: r_boulware@hotmail.com CC: u-boot@lists.denx.de
Hi Raleigh,
On Thu, Jun 23, 2011 at 9:37 AM, Raleigh Boulware r_boulware@hotmail.com wrote:
Thanks for your help.
I have several boards I am looking at. One is a Pentium Main board that uses the Intel 82340LX chip set. Anther board is a Pentium that uses the Opti Viper Chip set. The third is just a Mother board that has a custom FPGA as the North and south bridge.
A couple of questions:
- Are these commercially available boards?
No these are boards I have here at home that I am working with.
- Do you have model/part numbers?
I believe the Chip set numbers are 82C556, 82C557, and 82C558 this is for the Opti board. I also have schematics in Orcad for this board and full ducmentation on this chipset.
- Is this a work related port (versus a spare time personal effort)?
No actually this is a home project. At work I do Hardware development. Schematics, board layout and debug.
I think the Intel and Opti main boards could be used down the road for others to port U-boot to other Later Platforms.
Yes, I would love to get bare-bones support for more x86 CPUs into U-Boot. So far I have only done sc520 because that is all I have ready access to
Well these boards are just first generation Pentium mother boards. I know the performance is slow compared to today's standard, but they are easy to write code for because the registers are as many as the chipsets today. I am also working on a platform that has no North bridge or south bridge. This might be easier from a U-boot linux stand point but more difficult from a Hardware standpoint
Also, have you looked at Coreboot (it is a BIOS replacement project). Not that I don't want to get more x86 U-Boot ports running, but you may find that the board you are looking at is already supported by Coreboot (especially if it is a commercially available motherboard)
I have to admit my programming skills in the GNU enviroment is very limited. I am taken a Linux course now at work and I somewhat understand. I guess right now I am trying to understand and work my way through the U-boot source. So please excuse any questions that might seen odd or dumb.
Ask away - If you are unsure of mailing list etiquette, Wolfgang is rather fond of these two links:
http://www.netmeister.org/news/learn2quote.html http://catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
Yeah this seems like alot to try to remember to do...I'm sure I am breaking a bunch of rules on this.
Don't forget to have a good look through the U-Boot wiki at:
http://www.denx.de/wiki/U-Boot/WebHome
And the 'U-Boot Porting Guide' found in the README:
http://git.denx.de/?p=u-boot.git;a=blob_plain;f=README;hb=HEAD
Just so you know, U-Boot is a hobby for me (i.e. limited time, no budget). I'm more than willing to help, but unfortunately that help is not going to extend to buying my own development hardware
Yeah, this is a hobby for me too. It is a Sloooowww hobby at that...
This U-boot seems very big I am trying to fumble my way through it. Right now I am going through the .S files from the reset vector and following it from there. I got to the 'Start.S' and got lost that's why I asked about which board on the tree was the sc520 or x86 platform.
I will keep trying to make baby steps and ask questions if I get stuck
thanks for your help.
My pleasure
Regards,
Graeme