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notes for new users

Posted: Sun Nov 16, 2014 5:59 pm
by charliex
after playing with a vocore for a day, i thought i'd share my cliff notes. most of these i found on the forum, or posts, but they're all over the place and the first places you go are usually wrong or incomplete

there are lots of schematics marked v1.0 they're not all the same and don't match the boards we got, so double check that if you hook up TTL and it's making the tx/rx led lights on the supplied usb adapter, its wrong. i ended up using the schematic image with the highlighted power in a red box ( since the power is switched around) its ok to have the dock connected when on serial, and usb powered, just dont connect the 5v/3.3v since the supplied adapter can't handle the load for the prolific chip and the vocore.

the prolific chip needs drivers to be installed on OSX.

flashing a new kernel by mtd/loadb switches off wireless by default, so you have to either preconfig or serial in. Using luci to update saves the settings.

there's a bug in uboot (well a few it seems) after you've done the loadb , use tftpbootd and control C out of it to make the spi flash work , not working it'll show a really small value and flash really quickly. if the kermit transfer fails, reboot and reenter the console with x, since it'll just add on to the existing transfer.

once you get the serial hooked up, and there is a uboot on there, you'll see data coming out a 57,600 ( i wasn't able to change the baud rate prepare for a 10 minute transfer of the firmware) you can also login and use openwrt from there.

we thought we'd just borked the flash since mtd finished with an [e] and it just seemed to freeze, turns out if was because the wifi/dhcp is default off when you load a firmware that way. i used scp to copy the firmware from bin/ralink/ it on to /


the schematics are a little hard to read at first since different nomenclature and version numbers stay the same in rev's, the wire thats not labelled and blue solid arrow is 5V/, the hole1/2's are ground on our board ( matches http://vonger.cn/upload/VoCore.v1.0.pcb.pdf this link for my board, not the ones on the wiki or howto's) this one has wrong diagram for our boards http://vonger.cn/?p=780

the manual has inconsistencies in power, http://vonger.cn/upload/vocore.manual.pdf 3.2V to 6.0V on input voltage isn't correct, its 3.5V to 6.0V (correct on pins)

if you use kermit, just loadb with no offset and then do the send with a full path from kermit, then ctrl \C out at the end , for those not used to SLIP kermits escape out is Ctrl + \ then the C key. its not a typo and means ctrl C

oncec you're in kermit at 576008n1 and connect then x to get into the console
VoCore> loadb
## Ready for binary (kermit) download to 0x80100000 at 57600 bps...
ctrl +\c here
(Back at charliemac)
----------------------------------------------------
Kermit>send /Volumes/OpenWrt/openwrt-vocore/bin/ramips/openwrt-ramips-rt305x-vocore-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin
Kermit>connect
Connecting to /dev/tty.usbserial, speed 57600
Escape character: Ctrl-\ (ASCII 28, FS): enabled
Type the escape character followed by C to get back,
or followed by ? to see other options.
----------------------------------------------------
## Total Size = 0x00300004 = 3145732 Bytes
## Start Addr = 0x80100000
VoCore> erase linux

Erase linux kernel block !!
From 0x50000 length 0x3B0000
raspi_erase: offs:50000 len:3b0000
...........................................................
VoCore> cp.linux 300004

Copy linux image[262 byte] to SPI Flash[0x00050000]....
raspi_write: to:50000 len:106
.
VoCore> cp.linux 300004


fails, with wrong size.

after loadb is finished use tftpboot command, then break out of it with Ctrl+\c, then do the cp.linux <yoursize>

example
VoCore> tftpboot

netboot_common, argc= 1

NetTxPacket = 0x81FE59C0

KSEG1ADDR(NetTxPacket) = 0xA1FE59C0

NetLoop,call eth_halt !

NetLoop,call eth_init !
Trying Eth0 (10/100-M)

Waitting for RX_DMA_BUSY status Start... done


Header Payload scatter function is Disable !!

ETH_STATE_ACTIVE!!
*** Warning: no boot file name; using 'test.bin'
Using Eth0 (10/100-M) device
TFTP from server 10.10.10.3; our IP address is 10.10.10.123
Filename 'test.bin'.

TIMEOUT_COUNT=10,Load address: 0x80100000
Loading: *
ArpTimeoutCheck
T T T T T T T T T T
Abort
VoCore> erase.linux
Usage:
erase - erase SPI FLASH memory

VoCore> erase linux

Erase linux kernel block !!
From 0x50000 length 0x3B0000
raspi_erase: offs:50000 len:3b0000
...........................................................
VoCore> cp.linux 300004
current count: 3145732

Copy linux image[3145732 byte] to SPI Flash[0x00050000]....
raspi_write: to:50000 len:300004
.................................................
VoCore> reset



to turn the wifi on from inside busybox
uci set wireless.@wifi-device[0].disabled=0;uci commit wireless;wifi

Re: notes for new users

Posted: Mon Nov 17, 2014 7:09 pm
by ReinVoc
Lucky you for get this working.
I tried 3x already (15+ min loadb) and then a tftpboot first but it still wont write :\
I think it's just random... have you tried again with tftpboot trick and can get it to work consistently?

Also tried to just tftpboot 0x08010000 myimage.bin (which loads)
but get the same fking write thing where it writes nothing :\

Anyone any other suggestions how to get mine working again (need to reflash trough uboot) or any idea what could be going wrong?!

Re: notes for new users

Posted: Mon Nov 17, 2014 7:11 pm
by ReinVoc
Lucky you for get this working.
I tried 3x already (15+ min loadb) and then a tftpboot first but it still wont write :\
I think it's just random... have you tried again with tftpboot trick and can get it to work consistently?

Also tried to just tftpboot 0x08010000 myimage.bin (which loads)
but get the same fking write thing where it writes nothing :\

Anyone any other suggestions how to get mine working again (need to reflash trough uboot) or any idea what could be going wrong?!

Re: notes for new users

Posted: Mon Nov 17, 2014 8:13 pm
by charliex
i've been using sysupgrade on the vocore to update the firmware (keeping the config)

sysupgrade -v /tmp/openwrt-ramips-rt305x-vocore-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin

i assume thats what luci uses too, and i did see Vonger say luci wasn't stable enough to do fw flashes correctly, is anyone else using it.

i haven't setup a root fs yet in my fw build so that its all setup with wireless when i do a full fw flash.

Re: notes for new users

Posted: Tue Nov 18, 2014 12:33 am
by Vonger
Hi,
That is random, due to uboot bug. Just hope one day uboot office support that :'(
It can be detours by this way:
once loadb finished, call tftpboot then use Ctrl+C to cancel the process. (tftpboot command is just used to clean up that memory to zero). then you can call cp.linux XXXXXXX(the size), it will work normal.
I already put this note to vocore.io/wiki, check there :)

Re: notes for new users

Posted: Tue Nov 18, 2014 8:41 am
by ReinVoc
Hi Vonger,

I'm not sure if it's random. I got it to work, seems to work pretty well aslong as the firmware is under 3b0000 bytes (which is also the size erase linux removes).
Also then tftpboot works fine. I used:
setenv ipaddr 192.168.1.11
setenv serverip 192.168.1.12
tftpboot 0x08010000 new.bin
erase linux
cp.linux <size that tftpboot gives u>

I tried 30x with a size bigger than 3b0000, always seems to fail, anything under just works.

Anyways i'm back in and sure i can do bigger firmwares from sysupgrade again.

Re: notes for new users

Posted: Tue Nov 18, 2014 7:53 pm
by charliex
yeah i've flashed my vocore maybe 40 times so far, a few times with luci, a dozen times with loadb + kermit and now i'm using only sysupgrade, pretty much down to a scp + sysupgrade script so i can make as part of the build process. didn't work at all with the loadb until i did the tftpdboot trick. id id that after linux.erase as well.

i couldn't get the baud rate to change in uboot either, so the kermit load is like 10 minutes

you can always JTAG it, just need the right flash algo.

Re: notes for new users

Posted: Wed Nov 19, 2014 11:20 am
by Ingmar
OK. Got mine, read a few posts. But where do i start? Is there any recommended reading apart from the docs on the OpenWRT site?

Re: notes for new users

Posted: Wed Nov 19, 2014 4:20 pm
by charliex
openwrt seems one of the better places, what sort of info are you looking for

Re: notes for new users

Posted: Wed Nov 19, 2014 8:32 pm
by Ingmar
Well, as I said, I'd like to install new firmware, but I do not want to risk ruining the Vocore by bricking it. So I am actually looking for a safe method to toy with it.