Hi Wolfgang,

On Jan 4, 2009, at 12:28 AM, Wolfgang Denk wrote:

Dear Alex Perez,

In message DB05811D-49A2-48E9-BA71-EF45C615F792@alexperez.com you wrote:

...

Hi folks! I've recently acquired two MPC860-based eval boards made by EST Corp (now part of Wind River Systems for the last handful of years), and I'm looking to get it booting Linux via u-boot.

You can speculate that (probably very old) ports might exist, but in any case you have to exactly identify these boards first. What are the exact names / types of these boards?

Yes, I know for a fact that very old ports exist, and running them for the time being would be fine, as a starting-point. The boards themselves contain, unbelievably, no model/part numbers. The boards simply have EST Corp silk-screened on them, with one American and one European phone number which both ring to Wind River sales offices. I've seen the board referred to as the SBC860 on-line in a couple of places. I am nearly positive this is the board in question.

...

Additionally, I'm also looking for MPC860 BDM hardware I can make on

For BDM hardware you might look into the (old) MPC4BDM project, see http://www.vas-gmbh.de/software/mpcbdm/ ; we still support this BDM adapter in the GDB that is inclided with the ELDK. If you have any other hardware, look into the UrJTAG project at http://www.urjtag.org/

Thanks, I also discovered this page earlier today. I've got a wiggler- compatible JTAG adapter, but I guess I'll have to build this BDM module as well.

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my own. Does anyone have any suggestions? I got these boards sans ANY documentation, and they have a boatload of DIP switches as well as a dozen or so jumpers scattered across the board. If someone would like a photo of the board, I'll reply with a URL.

He. Without any documentation you cannot do anything. You will need detailed hardware specs, ideally including the schematics before you can attempt to port U-Boot or Linux to such hardware.

I realize this. The board itself is quite well built, and in all likelihood, it has some sort of integrated ROM monitor. The serial ports are strangely on RJ11 connectors, and I don't know what their pinouts are. I have a call in to Wind River systems, but

Without documentation these boards are only usable as doorstops.

Understood, which is why I was appealing for help here. It's quite likely that someone subscribed to this list has used this eval board somewhere along the line. The MPC8xx was essentially superseded by the Freescale MPC8xxx, but the MPC860 is still manufactured by Motorola's spawn, Freescale.

There's a photo of the board in very high res available at http://flickr.com/photos/liberalex/3164024448/sizes/o/

Thanks for taking the time to reply to my e-mail, Wolfgang. It's most appreciated. From examining the mailing list archives, I see that there is only light MPC860 related traffic over the last couple of years. The most recent, pertinent patch related to MPC860 is at http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.boot-loaders.u-boot/29065/match=mpc860

Regards, Alex

Alex Perez wrote:

Hi Wolfgang,

On Jan 4, 2009, at 12:28 AM, Wolfgang Denk wrote:

[snip]

I realize this. The board itself is quite well built, and in all likelihood, it has some sort of integrated ROM monitor. The serial ports are strangely on RJ11 connectors, and I don't know what their pinouts are. I have a call in to Wind River systems, but

...

Without documentation these boards are only usable as doorstops.

I have a EST/SBC8260 board (also made by EST before they were bought by WR, many years ago) that also uses RJ-11s for serial I/O. Odds are good they have the same pinout:

1 MAX-232 Rin 2 MAX-232 Tout 3 n/c 4 Ground

If you ohm-out the pins to find ground and then use a scope as you power on the board to look at the pins to find Tx, you have most of the puzzle solved.

[snip]

Regards, Alex

Nothing like a Quixote quest. :-) gvb