raw nand on x86 - reference boards

raw nand on x86 - reference boards

[Daniel Toussaint]

Hi, 

Does anyone know where I can find an x86 based sbc with nand chips on
board(NOT implemented as ide flash disk) OR maybe an ISA/pci add-on card
of some sort ? I need it to do a proof of concept , write some drivers
and a bootloader (x86 legacy bios extension)  .... 

Thanks, 

Re: raw nand on x86 - reference boards

[David Woodhouse]

On Mon, 2003-09-29 at 17:16 +0800, Daniel Toussaint wrote:
> Hi, 
> 
> Does anyone know where I can find an x86 based sbc with nand chips on
> board(NOT implemented as ide flash disk) OR maybe an ISA/pci add-on card
> of some sort ? I need it to do a proof of concept , write some drivers
> and a bootloader (x86 legacy bios extension)  .... 

A DiskOnChip 2000 or Millennium sounds like an ideal answer for this.

-- 
dwmw2

Re: raw nand on x86 - reference boards

[Jasmine Strong]

> On Mon, 2003-09-29 at 17:16 +0800, Daniel Toussaint wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> Does anyone know where I can find an x86 based sbc with nand chips on
>> board(NOT implemented as ide flash disk)
> A DiskOnChip 2000 or Millennium sounds like an ideal answer for this.

...and most x86 SBCs have a DiskOnChip socket, including those made
by my ex-employers, Dexdyne.

:-)

-Jasmine.

Re: raw nand on x86 - reference boards

[daniel]

On Mon, 2003-09-29 at 17:22, David Woodhouse wrote:
> On Mon, 2003-09-29 at 17:16 +0800, Daniel Toussaint wrote:
> > Hi, 
> > 
> > Does anyone know where I can find an x86 based sbc with nand chips on
> > board(NOT implemented as ide flash disk) OR maybe an ISA/pci add-on card
> > of some sort ? I need it to do a proof of concept , write some drivers
> > and a bootloader (x86 legacy bios extension)  .... 
> 
> A DiskOnChip 2000 or Millennium sounds like an ideal answer for this.
I am familiar with those devices(we are using them in our current
designs), we are looking to replace them with raw nand - As you
recomended me a couple of months ago, in a discussion we had on this
list, concerning jffs2 on diskonchip devices. 
So actually, the design people at my company are ready to switch to
using this kind of flash - only I'll need some working sample to
convince them, especially with regard to booting. 


  

Re: raw nand on x86 - reference boards

[David Woodhouse]

On Mon, 2003-09-29 at 17:37 +0800, daniel@dmhome.net wrote: 
> I am familiar with those devices(we are using them in our current
> designs), we are looking to replace them with raw nand - As you
> recomended me a couple of months ago, in a discussion we had on this
> list, concerning jffs2 on diskonchip devices. 
> So actually, the design people at my company are ready to switch to
> using this kind of flash - only I'll need some working sample to
> convince them, especially with regard to booting. 
You can just use the DiskOnChip as raw NAND -- look at 
drivers/mtd/nand/diskonchip.c

It uses software ECC (although I'm actually going to fix that before the
new driver obsoletes the standalone doc2000 driver), and just waggles
the NAND control lines as a real 'raw NAND' solution would.

For booting you do need some 'real' NOR flash, although presumably you
have that for your BIOS anyway. The DiskOnChip Millennium could be used
as a 'total' solution, replacing the BIOS flash too -- see LinuxBIOS for
examples of this.

Pick a bootloader to stick into flash with the BIOS. Add NAND flash and
JFFS2 support, and make it can load and run a kernel from the JFFS2 file
system (or even a separate raw partition of the flash).

During development, you could even use the DiskOnChip's mechanism for
loading BIOS extensions -- see how it's done for Grub. You can worry
about putting it on the system board with the BIOS later.

RedBoot might be an ideal candidate for this since the JFFS2 code
already runs in eCos; you just have to add the NAND support and the
trivial command handler to actually load a file into memory from the
file system.

-- 
dwmw2

Re: raw nand on x86 - reference boards

[daniel]

On Mon, 2003-09-29 at 17:54, David Woodhouse wrote:

> You can just use the DiskOnChip as raw NAND 

> -- look at 
> drivers/mtd/nand/diskonchip.c
Yep, i've seen that one, I completely forgot about it! Good idea, also
the boards I am working with all have a doc socket already.  

> Pick a bootloader to stick into flash with the BIOS. Add NAND flash and
> JFFS2 support, and make it can load and run a kernel from the JFFS2 file
> system (or even a separate raw partition of the flash).
Originally I was thinking about using etherboot as a base to start from,
add support for booting images from a raw flash partition. (they already
have this for booting from disk). 


Thanks a lot,

Re: raw nand on x86 - reference boards

[David Woodhouse]

On Mon, 2003-09-29 at 18:27 +0800, daniel@dmhome.net wrote: 
> > drivers/mtd/nand/diskonchip.c
> Yep, i've seen that one, I completely forgot about it! Good idea, also
> the boards I am working with all have a doc socket already.  

Bear in mind you can use a Millennium to replace BIOS flash too -- if
you're arguing on grounds of cost, you need to compare the cost of your
NOR flash _and_ the NAND with the cost of a DiskOnChip Millennium of
similar size.

> Originally I was thinking about using etherboot as a base to start from,
> add support for booting images from a raw flash partition. (they already
> have this for booting from disk). 

If you're going to stick to booting from raw NAND flash that makes
sense. If you want to boot a kernel from a JFFS2 partition on NAND,
it'll be a lot of work to make it happen in etherboot.

-- 
dwmw2

Re: raw nand on x86 - reference boards

[David Goodenough]

On Monday 29 September 2003 10:16, Daniel Toussaint wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Does anyone know where I can find an x86 based sbc with nand chips on
> board(NOT implemented as ide flash disk) OR maybe an ISA/pci add-on card
> of some sort ? I need it to do a proof of concept , write some drivers
> and a bootloader (x86 legacy bios extension)  ....
>
> Thanks,

How about the Compulab boards.  They come with both NOR and NAND
flash on the x86CORE boards.  Unfortunately there is no MTD driver for 
them, and while there is Linux support, it comes as part binary only.

From what I can see there is not enough formal documentation to 
write a driver, but there are odd bits of information which someone
knowledgable about with the MTD driver might be able to interpret
into a real driver.  You would be doing the Compulab users a favor
if you built such a driver.

There do also appear to be drivers for two of the AMD Elan SC520
reference boards, but at least one seems to have lots of comments
in it saying that handling it is a kludge.  The Compulab 586CORE
is Elan SC520 based.

Regards

David

Re: raw nand on x86 - reference boards

[Daniel Toussaint]

Indeed, as far as I can tell Compulab are really one of the few who have
this kind of nand flash implementation on an "off the shelf" SBC. I
briefly looked at their manuals/drivers, and came to the same conclusion
as you have: it may take some reverse engineering skills or "good
contacts" to get mtd to work on their board.
I think may I'll try to get a sample anyways, even so it won't be
suitable as a "reference board", it will certainly be fun to try and get
it to work. ... 

Thanks, 

Daniel


On Mon, 2003-09-29 at 20:51, David Goodenough wrote:
> On Monday 29 September 2003 10:16, Daniel Toussaint wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > Does anyone know where I can find an x86 based sbc with nand chips on
> > board(NOT implemented as ide flash disk) OR maybe an ISA/pci add-on card
> > of some sort ? I need it to do a proof of concept , write some drivers
> > and a bootloader (x86 legacy bios extension)  ....
> >
> > Thanks,
> 
> How about the Compulab boards.  They come with both NOR and NAND
> flash on the x86CORE boards.  Unfortunately there is no MTD driver for 
> them, and while there is Linux support, it comes as part binary only.
> 
> From what I can see there is not enough formal documentation to 
> write a driver, but there are odd bits of information which someone
> knowledgable about with the MTD driver might be able to interpret
> into a real driver.  You would be doing the Compulab users a favor
> if you built such a driver.
> 
> There do also appear to be drivers for two of the AMD Elan SC520
> reference boards, but at least one seems to have lots of comments
> in it saying that handling it is a kludge.  The Compulab 586CORE
> is Elan SC520 based.
> 
> Regards
> 
> David
> 
> 
> ______________________________________________________
> Linux MTD discussion mailing list
> http://rd.mailshell.com/lists.infradead.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-mtd/

Re: raw nand on x86 - reference boards

[Stephen Brown]

Hi,

I use the p5e core module by AMPro , it is pc104 SBC and has an 8MB DOC,
only problem I would say is that they copy EEPROM bios into the boot sector,
so if your thinking about creating a boot loader might be difficult, the way
I make it work is by loading from DOS using Loadlin then after talking to
David managed to get the DOC mounted as a DOS partition , this was fine for
what I needed it to do, any specs or other information you need let me know,
if thats what your after of course.

nice to see David Woodhouse got a mention in a new book I have recently
purchased :D,

'Building Embedded Linux Systems' by Karim Yaghmour

kind regards

stephen
----- Original Message -----
From: "Daniel Toussaint" <daniel@dmhome.net>
To: <linux-mtd@lists.infradead.org>
Sent: Monday, September 29, 2003 10:16 AM
Subject: raw nand on x86 - reference boards


> Hi,
>
> Does anyone know where I can find an x86 based sbc with nand chips on
> board(NOT implemented as ide flash disk) OR maybe an ISA/pci add-on card
> of some sort ? I need it to do a proof of concept , write some drivers
> and a bootloader (x86 legacy bios extension)  ....
>
> Thanks,
>
>
>
>
>
> ______________________________________________________
> Linux MTD discussion mailing list
> http://lists.infradead.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-mtd/
>
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