How to boot linux on sandpoint board ?

How to boot linux on sandpoint board ?

[Sarnath K - CTD, Chennai.]

I am a novice in the embedded PPC world,
I have been hearing a lot about PRep,CHRP, OF
booting, ppcBoot etc etc..on the net. I need to port a
part of linux code  to PPC and get it work in
a sandpoint board. Can any of u brief me about
whats what ? The big picture of whats goin on ?
A bit of DINK and memory layout when the kernel
is loaded would also be of great help. Any pointers
to how linux boots on the PPC would also be of great help.
Just the  philosophy would do..( without referring source files).
Whats the "ppcBoot" project is about ?

Sarnath


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Re: How to boot linux on sandpoint board ?

[Mark A. Greer]

Sarnath,

Yes, the sandpoint is supported in the public linux source base.  There are
some things you need to know, though.

1) There are 2 types of sandpoint boards, X2 and X3, you have to know which
one you have and select the appropriate option
2) It has been some time since I've verified that it still works and a lot has
changed (in linuxppc_2_4_devel) so you may run into problems
3) Depending on how you download, etc., you may need to strip off the first
64KB of the zImage
4) The general instructions for building a kernel are:
  a) get the src (I'm assuming linuxppc_2_4_devel) and [cross]compile tools
  b) go into the top level directory (and set the Makefile appropriately)
  c) "make sandpoint_config"
  d) "make oldconfig" (or menuconfig if you need to change some options)
  e) "make dep zImage"
  f) the zImage (which is probably what you want) will be in
arch/ppc/boot/images/zImage.sandpoint

For more info, you need to refer to the mailing list archives and appropriate
linuxppc websites.

Mark


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Re: How to boot linux on sandpoint board ?

[ashish anand]

Sarnath Kannan wrote:
>
> Hi every1,
>  Thanx for quick replies. Was a good introduction.
>  But I have some more doubts.
> > Yes!... Linux has to be changed based on Architecure,
> > and the board (chipset). And for additional devices,
> > we can put in device drivers as necessary. For
> > example, port for PPC is different from
> > port for ARM or x86.
>   Yeah,I can understand that linux for PPC is diff from
>   linux for x86. But how come linux for PPC is diff
>   from Linux on a sandpoint. For exp, in an IBM board,
>   PIC always sits at IO addresses 0x20 and 0xA0. In any
>   IBM board, whether it is for a PC or for a minimal
>   board, the basic chipsets and their IO address space
>   assignments (Which are hardwired, as in case of PIC,
>   8254) remain the same. So, if we need to run a
>   desktop OS on a minimal board, the changes involved
>   would be less. This is my understanding. Correct
>   me if I am wrong. Coming to point, has sandpoint
>   board got some additional chipsets ? or has it got
>   the same chipsets arranged in a diff way, i mean

you should understand the fact that PPC is a general term.
don't be overcarried away by this..

there can be many processors based on PPC.
Likewise Sandpoint is a board where different processors can go as
PPMC card.

issues can vary with every combination .
things to start with high level idea of general PPC arch.
and manual of processor you are using.
first target should be successful booting.
as a shortcut tip booting you can get happening by setbat() and ioremap()
manipulations if reqd.also for your help there are discussions in this archive .
you can debug during booting by sending some characters on serial port.
but do it cautiousely as it may cause hang at some places if address decoding of that is not
setup during initialization .

later on  sandpoint porting requires little more effort in terms of
peripheral support and interrupt (EPIC) initialisation.
but you should target these two later.
to the best of my remembrance I had used sandpoint on MODE 0 and 1 only.

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