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Re: Source to U-boot

Posted: Wed Apr 08, 2015 8:48 pm
by Clydesdal
noblepepper wrote:I have a functioning uboot that can upload images over http in addition to the stock serial and tftp methods (flagrant plagerization of pepe2k's work for atheros soc's) is anyone interested in trying/testing this?



I'd be interested!

Re: Source to U-boot

Posted: Sat Apr 11, 2015 1:02 pm
by noblepepper
I'll put together some instructions and get what you need ready. I'll be back in touch in a few days.

Will you use a dock or bare VoCore? With a dock you will need to be able to connect either gpio 0 or 27 to +3v and ground, which is harder to do than it sounds because of physical clearances. The gpio connections are easy with a bare VoCore on Greenwire's breakout board but you need to implement the ethernet interface yourself. While everything can be done through a ssh session it is good to have the UART connection as on page 6 of the manual in case of trouble, do you have this implemented?

The only way I expect you could totally brick the VoCore is losing power while the uboot partition is being written but it is always good to have a safety net. I can write the flash chip directly but it requires recent Flashrom and a SPI programmer. I use a Flashrom 0.9.8 on Debian Wheezy, an Arduino Uno and 5v to 3v level converter like this. If you aren't running Linux a LiveCD should work too.

Re: Source to U-boot

Posted: Tue Apr 14, 2015 7:07 pm
by noblepepper
Ok, ready for testers, instructions are here.

Source is here, precompiled binaries are here

If you try this PLEASE let me know how things go.

Re: Source to U-boot

Posted: Wed Apr 15, 2015 1:23 am
by charliex
i built the uBoot source with the toolchain, haven't gone beyond that yet.

Re: Source to U-boot

Posted: Wed Apr 15, 2015 9:47 am
by noblepepper
If you use a u-boot that you build yourself, make SURE you get it configured correctly in the make menuconfig step. I set the DRAM component wrong on my first try and it wouldn't boot, had to write the flash chip directly to get the 'VoCore working again.

Re: Source to U-boot

Posted: Wed Apr 15, 2015 3:33 pm
by charliex
i used the settings you put in the github text, it's not a big deal for me if i brick is since i have jtag's and flash/eprom programmers to recover it. i'll try your spi tonight if i get chance.

Re: Source to U-boot

Posted: Wed Apr 15, 2015 5:06 pm
by noblepepper
Great, the only thing that isn't easily duplicated is the factory partition, just back it up with dd if=/dev/mtd2 of=/tmp/factory.backup and stash it somewhere safe you'll be golden.

Re: Source to U-boot

Posted: Fri Apr 24, 2015 7:20 pm
by noblepepper
@charliex - If you haven't tried this yet the latest at github has a lot of improvements, such as:

Debugging messages gone
tftp upload in addition to http
Access to uboot environment in openwrt
Cleaner webpages

Re: Source to U-boot

Posted: Sat Apr 25, 2015 4:33 am
by charliex
been stuck at work stuff, and trying to get the boards out to the board house i'll try to get to it this weekend.

Re: Source to U-boot

Posted: Sat Dec 12, 2015 9:44 pm
by nkhorman
noblepepper wrote:Ok, ready for testers, instructions are here.

Source is here, precompiled binaries are here

If you try this PLEASE let me know how things go.


So, I followed your instructions for writing your version of uboot from your github page to the flash.
After the mtd write operation ..
Code: Select all
mtd -r write /root/uboot.img uboot
the unit rebooted, but now it just sits there.
Power cycling yields the same result.
So apparently I did something wrong, and it seems as though i'm in the same boat as you were in, I'll have to directly write to the flash chip.

So, looking through your notes / instructions on doing that, you have detail about the hardware required, but no information on the operational use of the flashrom utility.

Could you please help a guy out of a jam, and provide some more detail ?
Specifically, how you formatted the image file to write to the flash and the location of that image in the flash, or did you use a layout file, and if so, could I get a copy of it ?

Regards