Re: [microblaze-uclinux] Booting from system ace

["Nathan Hillery" <nhillery1@xxxxxxxxx>]

John & Michal - Thanks for your helpful responses. I think I have a
much clearer view of what needs to happen now (it's amazing how I can
labor under delusion for so long, only realizing after a truer picture
emerges...)

John - If I add u-boot.elf to the ace file (I assume that's what you
mean), then I won't have need for fs-boot, correct?  If I understand
it corrrectly, the SystemACE configuration process will program the
FPGA, initialize RAM with u-boot, and jump to it.  Then it's up to
u-boot to locate the kernel in the filesystem on the SystemACE Compact
Flash.  Do the ace files and filesystem have to be in different
partitions? (sorry for 20 questions - pondering out loud now...) The
ACE needs to be in a FAT16 filesystem. U-boot & petalinux may be able
to support that, but there may be performance reasons to have a more
sophisticated filesystem for the linux files. (pondering done - at
least out loud;-)

Michal - If I read http://monstr.eu/wiki/doku.php correctly, it looks
like you have added support for SystemACE to u-boot. Is that correct?
It looks like your git server is down - is there an alternative and/or
when will yours be available again? Finally, it looks like the page
describing the lltemac driver for u-boot is a site with "limited
access".  I have a need for temac support, what do I need to do to get
access to that? (We have a Marvell 88E1121 dual gigabit transceiver on
our board. We've had problems where it looked like the temac is
referencing phy0, but the 88E1121 operates on phy1. We also can't get
RGMII to work evidently.  Has anyone gotten either or both of those
features working, or have familiarity with the territory? Deadlines
passed, new milestones looming...)

On Tue, Oct 14, 2008 at 1:34 AM, John Williams <jwilliams@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Hi Nathan,
>
> Nathan Hillery wrote:
>>
>> I lied a little;-) My board has flash, but only enough to program the
>> FPGA.
>> I have fs-boot working from bram (it is selected to initialize block
>> ram) and it works - at least it starts and accepts an s-rec file.
>> However, it doesn't seem to know about the flash in system ace,
>> so it doesn't write the downloaded file correctly.  To get around
>> that, I was trying to get u-boot to build with system ace support, but
>> haven't been able to get it to compile successfully.
>>
>> I have found a potential solution in "Software Platform Settings" ->
>> "OS and Libraries" configuration for petalinux. This allows you to
>> select the "Name of Flash Memory Controller" for petalinux, but won't
>> recognize any variation on the name in my design.  The core is
>> xps_sysace and my instance is SysACE_CompactFlash.
>
> This is a common misconception.  SystemACE presents itself to the MicroBlaze
> as a block-based, disk-like device, not a typical parallel flash memory
> interface as is expected by the PetaLinux tools and u-boot default configs
> etc.
>
> As Michal says, you have a bit of work to do as this is not a default
> configuration.
>
> To be honest the easiest way to do this would be to just add the u-boot elf
> file as a payload after the configuration bitstream on the compact flash
> device, this would just boot u-boot directly after configuration the FPGA.
>
> But, you'll then have to hack on u-boot to get it to interact with the
> systemACE (as a disk, not flash memory).  Then, you should be able to pull a
> kernel from SystemACE for booting.  I think the upstream u-boot sources at
> denx.de have a SystemACE driver you could backport.
>
> Regards,
>
> John
>
>
>
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