We are using several PQ2FADS-VR and MPC8272ADS boards for a Linux project and are experiencing a high occurrence of boards that get into a state where they will not boot or behave erratically during boot.

The symptoms are usually that board continually resets in u-boot. See below for output examples. In other cases, the system will get to the point of attempting to load a kernel, but will claim the checksum is bad, or will start booting the kernel and crash shortly thereafter.

When folks bring me systems in this state, my "fix" has been to replace the 8MB flash SIMM. This usually gets them going again, but I honestly don't think the SIMM is the real problem. I have one PQ2FADS board that I have put four different SIMMs in and can not get it to boot. In most other cases, I can take the "bad" SIMM, put it in another board, reprogram it and it will work again (for a while).

In all of these cases, we are using known good u-boots (built from unmodified 1.1.2 source for either the PQ2FADS or MPC8272ADS) and known good, tested kernels. Typically, users will have been working for weeks without a problem until they run into this.

Here is the method I am using the program the flash using the BDI2000:

8275>unlock 0xff800000 0x40000 32

8275>erase 0xff800000 0x40000 32 Erasing flash at 0xff800000 Erasing flash at ... Erasing flash at 0xfffc0000 Erasing flash passed

8275>prog 0xfff00000 u-boot.bin.pq2fads bin Programming u-boot.bin.pq2fads , please wait .... Programming flash passed

8275>verify 0xfff00000 u-boot.bin.pq2fads bin Verifying u-boot.bin.pq2fads , please wait .... Verifying target memory passed

Is this incorrect?

Any insight or shared experience on this is greatly appreciated.

Thanks, Keath

Output such as this is typical (PQ2FADS output shown, MPC8272ADS output is similar):

---------------------------------------------------------------------------- --- U-Boot 1.1.2 (Aug 9 2005 - 12:58:57)

MPC8260 Reset Status: Check Stop, External Soft, External Hard

MPC8260 Clock Configuration - Bus-to-Core Mult 4x, VCO Div 2, 60x Bus Freq 25-75 , Core Freq 100-300 - dfbrg 1, corecnf 0x0a, busdf 3, cpmdf 1, plldf 0, pllmf 3 - vco_out 264000000, scc_clk 66000000, brg_clk 16500000 - cpu_clk 264000000, cpm_clk 132000000, bus_clk 66000000 - pci_clk 44000000

CPU: MPC8260 (HiP7 Rev 11, Mask 0.0 0K49M) at 264 MHz Board: Motorola PQ2FADS-ZU DRAM: 32 MB FLASH: ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- --- <reboot happens here>

Sometimes, we will see garbage output to the serial port while this is happening. Occasionally, we will see some crash dump info, but not usually. Example: ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- --- U-Boot 1.1.2 (Aug 9 2005 - 12:58:57)

MPC8260 Reset Status: External Soft, External Hard

MPC8260 Clock Configuration - Bus-to-Core Mult 4x, VCO Div 2, 60x Bus Freq 25-75 , Core Freq 100-300 - dfbrg 1, corecnf 0x0a, busdf 3, cpmdf 1, plldf 0, pllmf 3 - vco_out 264000000, scc_clk 66000000, brg_clk 16500000 - cpu_clk 264000000, cpm_clk 132000000, bus_clk 66000000 - pci_clk 44000000

CPU: MPC8260 (HiP7 Rev 11, Mask 0.0 0K49M) at 264 MHz Board: Motorola PQ2FADS-ZU DRAM: 32 MB FLASH: 8 MB In: serial Out: serial Err: serial Bad trap at PC: 248, SR: 0, vector=800 4NIP: 00000248 XER: 00000000 LR: 01FE64F8 REGS: 01fefea1 TRAP: 0800 DAR: 01FFE04 MSR: 00000000 EE: 0 PR: 0 FP: 1fefea1 ME: 0 IR/DR: 1ffe0240

GPR00: 03FCD7C0 01B88AA0 FFFFFFFF 01B88B5D 01FEFCD3 00000010 FFFFFFFE 00000000 GPR08: 00000001 01FDDAEC 00000000 01FEFCD4 00000030 FFFFFFFF 01FFE000 020C9000 GPR16: FFFFFFFF EFFFFFFF FFFFFFFF FFEFFEFF 00000000 01B889A0 821CDAD8 01FCC098 GPR24: 01B88B50 00000000 00000008 00000000 01B88B62 01B88F6C 00001466 01B88B40 Call backtrace: 01FE64F8 00000010 FFFFFFFE 01B88858 00000041 00000010 00000000 01B889B0 01B889B0 01B889B0 01B889B0 Exception in kernel pc 248 signal 0 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- --- <reboot>

As I mentioned above, these are just a couple of examples, output varies from board to board and boot-attempt to boot-attempt.