Hello.
I have a custom board with a Samsung s3c2410 (arm920t) processor. I have been unable to get the main branch of u-boot to work with this board. However, I have been successful with the old OpenMoko fork. (I believe it is because of the "SteppingStone" microcode. See http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/S3C2410_Steppingstone if you're unfamiliar.)
I'd prefer to use the main branch, because the OpenMoko fork is old and unmaintained. The OpenMoko project abandoned u-boot some time ago, in favor of their "Qi" bootloader.
Has anyone looked at merging the SteppingStone code back in to the main branch? Is there some other workaround that is unclear to me?
Are there other bootloaders that support SteppingStone that I could try? I'm looking for something as full-featured as u-boot, but actively maintained. The only other that I've found is Vivi - which is super ancient. Any advice is appreciated.
Thanks, Matt
2011/1/26 Matt Johnson mj1856@hotmail.com
Hello.
I have a custom board with a Samsung s3c2410 (arm920t) processor. I have been unable to get the main branch of u-boot to work with this board. However, I have been successful with the old OpenMoko fork. (I believe it is because of the "SteppingStone" microcode. See http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/S3C2410_Steppingstone if you're unfamiliar.)
I'd prefer to use the main branch, because the OpenMoko fork is old and unmaintained. The OpenMoko project abandoned u-boot some time ago, in favor of their "Qi" bootloader.
Has anyone looked at merging the SteppingStone code back in to the main branch? Is there some other workaround that is unclear to me?
Are there other bootloaders that support SteppingStone that I could try? I'm looking for something as full-featured as u-boot, but actively maintained. The only other that I've found is Vivi - which is super ancient. Any advice is appreciated.
Thanks, Matt
U-Boot mailing list U-Boot@lists.denx.de http://lists.denx.de/mailman/listinfo/u-boot
Steppingstone is just a 4KBytes buffer which works together with some kinda HW mechanism to copy the first 4KBytes of NAND to it. IMH, you can just treat it as a feature provided by S3C2410 to support NAND boot. If you have NOR flash in th board, you can simply boot from NOR flash and ignore this feature. I'm not sure whether there is some patches to support this feature or not, if not, may be you could provide one. The following is my advice to implement NAND boot for S3C2410: 1. write your NAND device driver, simply read operation is OK; 2. in the relocation part in Start.S, read code from NAND to RAM use your NAND device driver, and make sure the relocation part is in the very beginning 4KBytes range of NAND (by Loader script). In this way, the first 4KBytes in NAND will be read into Steppingstone buffer and executed, after execution of relocation code, your bootloader code will be read into RAM, and then the code can be executed in RAM, the full bootup procedure is over.
Le 26/01/2011 04:39, Cunsuo Guo a écrit :
2011/1/26 Matt Johnsonmj1856@hotmail.com
Hello.
I have a custom board with a Samsung s3c2410 (arm920t) processor. I have been unable to get the main branch of u-boot to work with this board. However, I have been successful with the old OpenMoko fork. (I believe it is because of the "SteppingStone" microcode. See http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/S3C2410_Steppingstone if you're unfamiliar.)
I'd prefer to use the main branch, because the OpenMoko fork is old and unmaintained. The OpenMoko project abandoned u-boot some time ago, in favor of their "Qi" bootloader.
Has anyone looked at merging the SteppingStone code back in to the main branch? Is there some other workaround that is unclear to me?
Are there other bootloaders that support SteppingStone that I could try? I'm looking for something as full-featured as u-boot, but actively maintained. The only other that I've found is Vivi - which is super ancient. Any advice is appreciated.
Thanks, Matt
U-Boot mailing list U-Boot@lists.denx.de http://lists.denx.de/mailman/listinfo/u-boot
Steppingstone is just a 4KBytes buffer which works together with some kinda HW mechanism to copy the first 4KBytes of NAND to it. IMH, you can just treat it as a feature provided by S3C2410 to support NAND boot. If you have NOR flash in th board, you can simply boot from NOR flash and ignore this feature. I'm not sure whether there is some patches to support this feature or not, if not, may be you could provide one. The following is my advice to implement NAND boot for S3C2410:
- write your NAND device driver, simply read operation is OK;
- in the relocation part in Start.S, read code from NAND to RAM use your
NAND device driver, and make sure the relocation part is in the very beginning 4KBytes range of NAND (by Loader script). In this way, the first 4KBytes in NAND will be read into Steppingstone buffer and executed, after execution of relocation code, your bootloader code will be read into RAM, and then the code can be executed in RAM, the full bootup procedure is over.
Why try to read from NAND to RAM in the relocation part of start.S, where you would not be able to use C or BSS variables?
I thought the whole idea of the NAND SPL was to allow writing the NAND-to-RAM bootloader as a standalone "kind-of-U-boot", in C, with all the bells and whistles (that can fit in the NAND boot sector).
Do I miss something?
If not, then my opinion is that Matt should look into the NAND SPL code and fit it to initialize and use the stepping stone for initial SPL loading if he feels this is worth it.
Amicalement,
2011/1/26 Albert ARIBAUD albert.aribaud@free.fr
Le 26/01/2011 04:39, Cunsuo Guo a écrit :
2011/1/26 Matt Johnsonmj1856@hotmail.com
Hello.
I have a custom board with a Samsung s3c2410 (arm920t) processor. I
have
been unable to get the main branch of u-boot to work with this board. However, I have been successful with the old OpenMoko fork. (I believe
it
is because of the "SteppingStone" microcode. See http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/S3C2410_Steppingstone if you're
unfamiliar.)
I'd prefer to use the main branch, because the OpenMoko fork is old and unmaintained. The OpenMoko project abandoned u-boot some time ago, in favor of their "Qi" bootloader.
Has anyone looked at merging the SteppingStone code back in to the main branch? Is there some other workaround that is unclear to me?
Are there other bootloaders that support SteppingStone that I could try? I'm looking for something as full-featured as u-boot, but actively maintained. The only other that I've found is Vivi - which is super ancient. Any advice is appreciated.
Thanks, Matt
U-Boot mailing list U-Boot@lists.denx.de http://lists.denx.de/mailman/listinfo/u-boot
Steppingstone is just a 4KBytes buffer which works together with some
kinda
HW mechanism to copy the first 4KBytes of NAND to it. IMH, you can just treat it as a feature provided by S3C2410 to support NAND boot. If you
have
NOR flash in th board, you can simply boot from NOR flash and ignore this feature. I'm not sure whether there is some patches to support this feature or
not,
if not, may be you could provide one. The following is my advice to implement NAND boot for S3C2410:
- write your NAND device driver, simply read operation is OK;
- in the relocation part in Start.S, read code from NAND to RAM use
your
NAND device driver, and make sure the relocation part is in the very beginning 4KBytes range of NAND (by Loader script). In this way, the first 4KBytes in NAND will be read into Steppingstone buffer and
executed,
after execution of relocation code, your bootloader code will be read
into
RAM, and then the code can be executed in RAM, the full bootup procedure
is
over.
Why try to read from NAND to RAM in the relocation part of start.S, where you would not be able to use C or BSS variables?
Because S3C2410 can _ONLY_ take the first 4KBytes into RAM (Basically some
hidden microcode in the S3C2410 takes care of copying the first 4KB of NAND flash into RAM), so the rest code must be relocated into RAM from NAND by the U-Boot code itself. Of course, there's no C environment set up yet, all job should be done by assembly code.
I thought the whole idea of the NAND SPL was to allow writing the NAND-to-RAM bootloader as a standalone "kind-of-U-boot", in C, with all the bells and whistles (that can fit in the NAND boot sector).
Do I miss something?
If not, then my opinion is that Matt should look into the NAND SPL code and fit it to initialize and use the stepping stone for initial SPL loading if he feels this is worth it.
Amicalement,
Albert. _______________________________________________ U-Boot mailing list U-Boot@lists.denx.de http://lists.denx.de/mailman/listinfo/u-boot
Dear Cunsuo Guo,
In message AANLkTin=D7T-JQB4BFNYiZPT8WbZX5Kjy-fqyabyZRAZ@mail.gmail.com you wrote:
Why try to read from NAND to RAM in the relocation part of start.S, where you would not be able to use C or BSS variables?
Because S3C2410 can _ONLY_ take the first 4KBytes into RAM (Basically some
hidden microcode in the S3C2410 takes care of copying the first 4KB of NAND flash into RAM), so the rest code must be relocated into RAM from NAND by the U-Boot code itself. Of course, there's no C environment set up yet, all job should be done by assembly code.
This is not really different from how NAND booting works on many other boards.
It is definitely not a reason to use assembly only.
Instead, the standard nand_spl approach should be used.
Best regards,
Wolfgang Denk
This is not really different from how NAND booting works on many other boards.
It is definitely not a reason to use assembly only.
Instead, the standard nand_spl approach should be used.
Does this work when the board is NAND only? There is no NOR flash on the board.
Where can I find more about nand_spl? Is this already coded for another board that I can copy from?
Thanks, Matt
Dear Matt Johnson,
In message BAY145-ds8BD2332E6DD5B203B1BA5C2FF0@phx.gbl you wrote:
Instead, the standard nand_spl approach should be used.
Does this work when the board is NAND only? There is no NOR flash on the board.
Yes, this for boards that boot from NAND (usually these have only NAND and no NOR).
Where can I find more about nand_spl? Is this already coded for another board that I can copy from?
See directory nand_spl.
Boards that use this:
-> grep -l CONFIG_NAND_SPL include/configs/* include/configs/MPC8313ERDB.h include/configs/MPC8315ERDB.h include/configs/MPC8536DS.h include/configs/MPC8569MDS.h include/configs/MPC8572DS.h include/configs/P1_P2_RDB.h include/configs/PMC440.h include/configs/SIMPC8313.h include/configs/acadia.h include/configs/bamboo.h include/configs/canyonlands.h include/configs/hawkboard.h include/configs/kilauea.h include/configs/mx31pdk.h include/configs/sequoia.h include/configs/smdk6400.h include/configs/smdkc100.h include/configs/tx25.h
Best regards,
Wolfgang Denk
participants (4)
-
Albert ARIBAUD -
Cunsuo Guo -
Matt Johnson -
Wolfgang Denk