Re: prom start

[Ralf Baechle <ralf@linux-mips.org>]

On Wed, Feb 06, 2013 at 05:05:10PM +0100, folkert wrote:

> Is this mailing list also meant for generic mips questions? (if not: any
> suggestions for one that is?)
> 
> If so: I'mm experimenting a bit with mips, specifically on SGI hardware
> (Indigo). Now it seems all mips systems have the prom at 0xbfc00000. But
> how does it start? The first 0x3c0 bytes seem to be nonsense. Somewhere
> on the web I found that 0xbfc00884 is the starting point but after
> single stepping 5 instructions, the program counter jumps to 0x00000000
> so I don't think that's the right one either. Also, reading the first 4
> bytes from bfc00000 and using that as a pointer seems to be invalid too:
> 0bf000f0.
> Anyone with insights regarding the booting of the prom on sgi systems?

All MIPS processors start execution at 0xbfc00000 after a hardware reset
or NMI.  0xbfc00884 is not an address that has any specific meaning in
the processor architecture itself.  I think it's being used in the GXemul
documentation just for sake of an example.

If your disassembler defaults to like MIPS I / R3000 it won't disassemble
all instructions for the MIPS III R4000 processor.  I'd expect some
cache initialization code right at 0xbfc00000 and that could would be
affected.

  Ralf