[PATCH v7 0/6] Add support for ZTE zx297520v3

Stefan Dösinger
2026-04-29T19:14:13Z

Hi,

This is a follow-up on my RFC patches from January [0] for ZTE's
zx297520v3 chipset. This chipset is popular in cheap LTE-to-wifi routers
sold in developing countries. My goal is to run OpenWRT on them. I made
more progress in more work on this SoC and it is time to get serious
about code review and upstreaming.

Since my version in January I managed to get more hardware running: SPI,
I2C, PMIC with real time clock and voltage regulators, Watchdog. LTE is
not working yet, but I am able to start the coprocessor that handles it
and talk to it via mailbox + shared memory. Wifi is working on a few
more devices. Since WiFi, USB and Ethernet are working, the devices can
have actual use with OpenWRT even without LTE.

Another hacker created a free software program to talk to the USB loader
[1] and boot U-Boot and Linux without modifying the on disk files. At
the moment it needs a proprietary blob, so my documentation is
emphasising booting with the on-device U-Boot.

This patchset here is mostly unmodified from the version I sent in
January. It is the bare minimum to get an interactive shell working on
the UART. Future patches can be found on my git repository [2] for those
curious to peek ahead. The first 30 patches are in reasonable shape, but
the further you go the more cleanup is necessary. I expect all of the
patches go require a few rounds of feedback though.

My plan for upstreaming is largly this:

1) This bare minimum boot patchset
2) Add clock and pinctrl drivers
3) Add standard hardware to the device tree
4) Add zx29 specific drivers one by one: Watchdog, spi, i2c, DMA, PMIC,
battery
5) SDIO backend for rtl8xxxu
6) rproc, mailbox and rpmsg

I am willing to maintain support for the SoC within reason. My patches
add myself as maintainer. This is a hobby project for me though, keep
that in mind if you want to ship a commercial product with these SoCs
and upstreaming Linux.

Cheers,
Stefan

0: https://lists.infradead.org/pipermail/linux-arm-kernel/2026-January/1099306.html
1: https://github.com/zx297520v3-mainline/zx297520v3-loader
2: https://gitlab.com/stefandoesinger/zx297520-kernel/

Signed-off-by: Stefan Dösinger <stefandoesinger@gmail.com>
---
Changes in v7:
Fix line order in mach-zte/Kconfig
Use "zx297520v3 SoC" as the option name for CONFIG_SOC_ZX297520V3

Changes in v6:
Squashed DT commits into one
Removed for-now unused board DT bindings
Add "zte" to DT patch subject
Regenerate the defconfig with make savedefconfig
- Link to v5: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20260421-send-v5-0-ace038e63515@gmail.com

v5:
Spelling fixes
Renamed dlink-dwr-932m.dts to zx297520v3-dlink-dwr932m.dts
DT binding indentation fixes
Use a manufacturer 0x8b for the UART, fix patch prefix
Declare all UARTs, remove uart aliases for now
Consistent license declarations. I made every new file except the DT
binding GPL-2.0-only but I don't particularly mind GPL-2.0-or-later
either.
- Link to v4: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20260416-send-v4-0-e19d02b944ec@gmail.com

v4: rename zx29.yaml to zte.yaml and add board enums
v3: Remove [RFC] tag, add defconfig
v2: checkpatch.pl fixes

---
Stefan Dösinger (6):
dt-bindings: arm: zte: Add D-Link DWR932M board based on zx297520v3 SoC
ARM: zte: Add zx297520v3 platform support
ARM: zte: Add support for zx29 low level debug
amba/serial: amba-pl011: Bring back zx29 UART support
ARM: dts: zte: Add D-Link DWR-932M support
ARM: zte: defconfig: Add a zx29 defconfig file

Documentation/arch/arm/zte/zx297520v3.rst | 158 +++++++++++++++++++++
Documentation/devicetree/bindings/arm/zte.yaml | 26 ++++
MAINTAINERS | 7 +
arch/arm/Kconfig | 2 +
arch/arm/Kconfig.debug | 12 ++
arch/arm/Makefile | 1 +
arch/arm/boot/dts/Makefile | 1 +
arch/arm/boot/dts/zte/Makefile | 3 +
arch/arm/boot/dts/zte/zx297520v3-dlink-dwr932m.dts | 22 +++
arch/arm/boot/dts/zte/zx297520v3.dtsi | 103 ++++++++++++++
arch/arm/configs/zx29_defconfig | 54 +++++++
arch/arm/include/debug/pl01x.S | 7 +
arch/arm/mach-zte/Kconfig | 26 ++++
arch/arm/mach-zte/Makefile | 2 +
arch/arm/mach-zte/zx297520v3.c | 19 +++
drivers/tty/serial/amba-pl011.c | 42 ++++++
16 files changed, 485 insertions(+)
---
base-commit: 028ef9c96e96197026887c0f092424679298aae8
change-id: 20260416-send-5c08e095e5c9

Best regards,
--
Stefan Dösinger <stefandoesinger@gmail.com>