Serial problem with MPC8241-based board

Serial problem with MPC8241-based board

[Zoltan HERPAI]

Hi all,

I've recently acquired an Allnet 6250 NAS, which has an MPC8241-based 
board. Since its GPL tarball is not available fully, I began to build a 
toolchain based on gcc-3.4.6 and binutils-2.16.1, and an up-to-date 
kernel for it. PPCboot states that this is a Sandpoint 8241 Unity board, 
so the platforms/sandpoint.* was chosen as a starting point, however, 
after rewriting the irq and ioport values in sandpoint.h to the ones 
(irq 137, ioport 0x80004500), no output came out of the serial port. 
After a few days of tweaking around with variables is sandpoint.h, a 
google session revealed that this board is 99% the same as the Buffalo 
Linkstation's is, which has a 2.6.x port also, but those kernels are 
also failing to display any output.
Can anyone shed some light on what points should I check and what may I 
have done wrong?

Regards,
Zoltan HERPAI

Re: Serial problem with MPC8241-based board

[Michael Galassi]

>I've recently acquired an Allnet 6250 NAS, which has an MPC8241-based 
>board. Since its GPL tarball is not available fully, I began to build a 
>toolchain based on gcc-3.4.6 and binutils-2.16.1, and an up-to-date 
>kernel for it. PPCboot states that this is a Sandpoint 8241 Unity board, 
>so the platforms/sandpoint.* was chosen as a starting point, however, 
>after rewriting the irq and ioport values in sandpoint.h to the ones 
>(irq 137, ioport 0x80004500), no output came out of the serial port. 
>After a few days of tweaking around with variables is sandpoint.h, a 
>google session revealed that this board is 99% the same as the Buffalo 
>Linkstation's is, which has a 2.6.x port also, but those kernels are 
>also failing to display any output.
>Can anyone shed some light on what points should I check and what may I 
>have done wrong?

I've recently spent a bunch of time chasing after display issues related
to the goofy way Linux handles consoles early on.  Try removing console=
from your boot arguments and see where that puts you.

-michael

Re: Serial problem with MPC8241-based board

[Zoltan HERPAI]

None of the iterations worked with the Sandpoint and Linkstation setups. 
Is there some way to test basic serial communication within the kernel, 
to at least see if the CPU initialization is done correctly?

-w-

Michael Galassi wrote:
>> I've recently acquired an Allnet 6250 NAS, which has an MPC8241-based 
>> board. Since its GPL tarball is not available fully, I began to build a 
>> toolchain based on gcc-3.4.6 and binutils-2.16.1, and an up-to-date 
>> kernel for it. PPCboot states that this is a Sandpoint 8241 Unity board, 
>> so the platforms/sandpoint.* was chosen as a starting point, however, 
>> after rewriting the irq and ioport values in sandpoint.h to the ones 
>> (irq 137, ioport 0x80004500), no output came out of the serial port. 
>> After a few days of tweaking around with variables is sandpoint.h, a 
>> google session revealed that this board is 99% the same as the Buffalo 
>> Linkstation's is, which has a 2.6.x port also, but those kernels are 
>> also failing to display any output.
>> Can anyone shed some light on what points should I check and what may I 
>> have done wrong?
>>     
>
> I've recently spent a bunch of time chasing after display issues related
> to the goofy way Linux handles consoles early on.  Try removing console=
> from your boot arguments and see where that puts you.
>
> -michael
>
>   

Re: Serial problem with MPC8241-based board

[Guennadi Liakhovetski]

On Sun, 3 Sep 2006, Zoltan HERPAI wrote:

> I've recently acquired an Allnet 6250 NAS, which has an MPC8241-based 
> board. Since its GPL tarball is not available fully, I began to build a 

that's where I'd start from - are at least kernel sources completely 
available? If not - would you consider politely asking the manufacturer 
for them?

> toolchain based on gcc-3.4.6 and binutils-2.16.1, and an up-to-date 
> kernel for it. PPCboot states that this is a Sandpoint 8241 Unity board, 
> so the platforms/sandpoint.* was chosen as a starting point, however, 
> after rewriting the irq and ioport values in sandpoint.h to the ones 
> (irq 137, ioport 0x80004500), no output came out of the serial port. 
> After a few days of tweaking around with variables is sandpoint.h, a 
> google session revealed that this board is 99% the same as the Buffalo 
> Linkstation's is, which has a 2.6.x port also, but those kernels are 
> also failing to display any output.

Well, on Linkstation (at least on KuroboxHG) serial port 0 (0x80004500) 
has irq 25 under 2.6. So, at least the irq assignment is different...

> Can anyone shed some light on what points should I check and what may I 
> have done wrong?

No light, sorry, but some info - Mark Greer (CC'ed) has ported sandpoint 
code recently from arch/ppc to arch/powerpc and to using the flattend 
device tree, which is a general trend now. He has send his patches to the 
list a couple of times. This work also depends on the boot-wrapper 
development for non Open-Firmware platforms. I'm trying to do the same for 
Kurobox(HG) / Linkstation, based on Mark's work. So, I think, it would be 
useful if you could do your port also directly under arch/powerpc too 
instead of arch/ppc.

Mark, may I use this opportunity to ask you for your current consistent 
snapshot of both powerpc/boot and powerpc/platforms and whatever others? I 
can compile a kernel with ARCH=powerpc for linkstation, now I have to find 
a way to boot it. My choices are kexec or u-boot. Neither will run 
out-of-the-box, so...

BTW, I would be greatful for any help with setting up kexec.

Thanks
Guennadi
---
Guennadi Liakhovetski

Re: Serial problem with MPC8241-based board

[Mark A. Greer]

On Sun, Sep 03, 2006 at 09:58:25PM +0200, Guennadi Liakhovetski wrote:

Hi Guennadi,

> Mark, may I use this opportunity to ask you for your current consistent 
> snapshot of both powerpc/boot and powerpc/platforms and whatever others? I 
> can compile a kernel with ARCH=powerpc for linkstation, now I have to find 
> a way to boot it. My choices are kexec or u-boot. Neither will run 
> out-of-the-box, so...

I'm in the middle of making a bunch of changes to the bootwrapper
patches so I don't have a good set of patches for you.
Hopefully in a day or two at which time I'll be happy to share them with you.

> BTW, I would be greatful for any help with setting up kexec.

I can't help you there.  You could try asking Milton Miller.

Mark