[microblaze-uclinux] flash tools

[John Williams <jwilliams@itee.uq.edu.au>]

Hi everyone,

The tcl/xmd-based flash tools I use are now available on the downloads 
page of the mblaze-uclinux website.  Included are Jan Shunke's flash 
script (with one minor modification), and another tiny one I wrote which 
uses Jan's tools to do binary file uploads via xmd.  Jan's script 
already does intel ihex and I think another format as well.

It's not Insight/Memec specific - but it does expect AMD-style flash. 
If you've got an OPB external memory controller hooked up to 32-bit wide 
flash on your board, these tools should work straight from the box. 
Some changes would probably be necessary for Intel flash - I'm not sure.

Don't forget to set the flash base address (e.g. 'base 0xff000000').

The syntax of the binary download command is simple:

fdow_binary filename address

e.g. fdow_binary image.bin 0xff000000

I'll be putting together some short HOWTO documents soon, but basically 
this is how I use these tools:

 From an elf image file (e.g. the uclinux kernel image.elf), create a 
raw binary file:

$ mb-objcopy -O binary image.elf image.bin

Then fire up xmd and "source" the flash tools:

$ xmd

xmd> source flashdow.tcl
xmd> base 0xff000000
xmd> face					# erase the flash
xmd> fdow_binary image.bin 0xff000000 		# upload the file

This can take quite a while, even over a UARTlite configured at 115kbps. 
  A little progress meter is displayed to reassure you it hasn't crashed.

Then you can use something like my trivial bootloader to copy the image 
from flash to ram at startup, and off you go.

Regards,

John

PS Has anybody looked at the "flash.tcl" file that's buried deep within 
the EDK directory heirarchy (i think in iplib/emc_v_1_00_e/tools or 
something like that)?  It seems to do everything you might need, but I 
haven't checked it out in any detail.

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