ANNOUNCE: Tegra application notes, (and tegrarcm & cbootimage)

ANNOUNCE: Tegra application notes, (and tegrarcm & cbootimage)

[Stephen Warren]

I'd like to announce or remind people of some documentation and tools we
have for Tegra development.

First up, we've just posted a few simple application notes describing
some details of how Tegra boots, the BCT format, etc. We intend to add
more articles to the series as time permits. Do let us know if there are
any burning topics you'd like covered, and I'll see if we can oblige.
You can find them at:

ftp://download.nvidia.com/tegra-public-appnotes/index.html

Second, a reminder of the tegrarcm tool (which has been published for a
while now). It interacts with the Tegra boot ROM of development-mode
devices to download code into SDRAM and executes it. This can be useful
for bootloader development, low-level "bricked" system recovery, etc.
It's available at:

http://nv-tegra.nvidia.com/gitweb/?p=tools/tegrarcm.git;a=summary

Third, we have just taken ownership of publishing a tool named
cbootimage, which can compile a text representations of a BCT into a
binary, or combine a binary and a bootloader into a flashable image.
This tool was previous available via the ChromiumOS project. It's
available at:

http://nv-tegra.nvidia.com/gitweb/?p=tools/cbootimage.git;a=summary

The latter two tools, used together with an upstream U-Boot, can be used
to create a completely Open-Source flashing system for Tegra devices;
compile U-Boot, create a flashable image using cbootimage, execute
U-Boot on the system using tegrarcm, get the flashable image onto the
system using an SD card or TFTP over the network, and use U-Boot to
write it to flash.

Finally, we hope to publish cbootimage configuration files for NVIDIA's
Tegra reference boards in the very near future. That will complete the
picture above.

Have fun!

Re: ANNOUNCE: Tegra application notes, (and tegrarcm & cbootimage)

[Mark Zhang]

On 12/08/2012 09:08 AM, Stephen Warren wrote:
> I'd like to announce or remind people of some documentation and tools we
> have for Tegra development.
> 
> First up, we've just posted a few simple application notes describing
> some details of how Tegra boots, the BCT format, etc. We intend to add
> more articles to the series as time permits. Do let us know if there are
> any burning topics you'd like covered, and I'll see if we can oblige.
> You can find them at:
> 
> ftp://download.nvidia.com/tegra-public-appnotes/index.html
> 
> Second, a reminder of the tegrarcm tool (which has been published for a
> while now). It interacts with the Tegra boot ROM of development-mode
> devices to download code into SDRAM and executes it. This can be useful
> for bootloader development, low-level "bricked" system recovery, etc.
> It's available at:
> 
> http://nv-tegra.nvidia.com/gitweb/?p=tools/tegrarcm.git;a=summary
> 
> Third, we have just taken ownership of publishing a tool named
> cbootimage, which can compile a text representations of a BCT into a
> binary, or combine a binary and a bootloader into a flashable image.
> This tool was previous available via the ChromiumOS project. It's
> available at:
> 
> http://nv-tegra.nvidia.com/gitweb/?p=tools/cbootimage.git;a=summary
> 
> The latter two tools, used together with an upstream U-Boot, can be used
> to create a completely Open-Source flashing system for Tegra devices;
> compile U-Boot, create a flashable image using cbootimage, execute
> U-Boot on the system using tegrarcm, get the flashable image onto the
> system using an SD card or TFTP over the network, and use U-Boot to
> write it to flash.
> 
> Finally, we hope to publish cbootimage configuration files for NVIDIA's
> Tegra reference boards in the very near future. That will complete the
> picture above.
> 

Yep. It's better to provide an example of "text representation BCT" as
well so that we can use "bct_dump" to generate a binary BCT file.

> Have fun!
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Re: ANNOUNCE: Tegra application notes, (and tegrarcm & cbootimage)

[Stephen Warren]

On 12/10/2012 01:05 AM, Mark Zhang wrote:
> On 12/08/2012 09:08 AM, Stephen Warren wrote:
>> I'd like to announce or remind people of some documentation and tools we
>> have for Tegra development.
...
>> Finally, we hope to publish cbootimage configuration files for NVIDIA's
>> Tegra reference boards in the very near future. That will complete the
>> picture above.
>>
> 
> Yep. It's better to provide an example of "text representation BCT" as
> well so that we can use "bct_dump" to generate a binary BCT file.

If you already have a binary BCT, bct_dump (also in the cbootimage git)
can generate the text representation for you. If you don't already have
a binary BCT, we'll be publishing the real text-based configuration
files hopefully soon. So I don't think there's a need for a separate
example is there?

Re: ANNOUNCE: Tegra application notes, (and tegrarcm & cbootimage)

[Stephen Warren]

On 12/07/2012 06:08 PM, Stephen Warren wrote:
> I'd like to announce or remind people of some documentation and tools we
> have for Tegra development.
> 
> First up, we've just posted a few simple application notes describing
> some details of how Tegra boots, the BCT format, etc. We intend to add
> more articles to the series as time permits. Do let us know if there are
> any burning topics you'd like covered, and I'll see if we can oblige.
> You can find them at:
> 
> ftp://download.nvidia.com/tegra-public-appnotes/index.html

An updated version had been published, which includes a new document
describing the high-level steps that nvflash and tegrarcm perform.

> Finally, we hope to publish cbootimage configuration files for NVIDIA's
> Tegra reference boards in the very near future. That will complete the
> picture above.

This is now published; available at:

> http://nv-tegra.nvidia.com/gitweb/?p=tools/tegra-cbootimage-configs.git;a=summary