[U-Boot] Flashing u-boot on NAND flash

[U-Boot] Flashing u-boot on NAND flash

[Afzal Nadirshah]

Hi Everybody,
       I am new to board bring up and I have a few queries.
       We have a custom board with a PPC 460EX processor and a NAND flash. We are using a BDI 3000 JTAG debug interface.
       My problem is how to load the u-boot onto the NAND flash on the fresh board, since the BDI does not support writing into
       NAND flash. Also from the mailing lists I understand that it is difficult to execute the u-boot by directly downloading to the
       RAM and executing it.
       Please guide me on how to approach this.
       Thanx in advance.

Thanks & Regards
Afzal Nadirshah| Senior Engineer | MindTree Ltd. Phase - I, Global Village West Campus, RVCE post, Mysore Road, Bangalore - 560059 |
Voice +91 80 26264100 Extn: 66759 / Fax +91 80 2671 4000 | email: afzal_nadirshah at mindtree.com<mailto:afzal_nadirshah@mindtree.com> |www.mindtree.com<http://www.mindtree.com/> |


________________________________
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[U-Boot] Flashing u-boot on NAND flash

[Stefan Roese]

On Tuesday 20 January 2009, Afzal Nadirshah wrote:
>        I am new to board bring up and I have a few queries.
>        We have a custom board with a PPC 460EX processor and a NAND flash.
> We are using a BDI 3000 JTAG debug interface. My problem is how to load the
> u-boot onto the NAND flash on the fresh board, since the BDI does not
> support writing into NAND flash.

Correct. AFAIK, the BDI doesn't support direct NAND reading/writing.

> Also from the mailing lists I understand 
> that it is difficult to execute the u-boot by directly downloading to the
> RAM and executing it.
>        Please guide me on how to approach this.

This is indeed not so easy. Currently there is no 4xx U-Boot target option to 
configure the image to boot directly from already configured SDRAM as until 
now all 4xx boards were able to boot from NOR FLASH. When only NAND booting 
is supported as in your case, you probably need such an configuration option 
such as CONFIG_SKIP_LOWLEVEL_INIT which is available on other platforms 
(MIPS, ARM).

Best regards,
Stefan

=====================================================================
DENX Software Engineering GmbH,     MD: Wolfgang Denk & Detlev Zundel
HRB 165235 Munich, Office: Kirchenstr.5, D-82194 Groebenzell, Germany
Phone: +49-8142-66989-0 Fax: +49-8142-66989-80  Email: office at denx.de
=====================================================================

[U-Boot] Flashing u-boot on NAND flash

[Afzal Nadirshah]

Hi,
I was going through the u-boot archives and I came across a reply from Leonid (http://lists.denx.de/pipermail/u-boot/2008-March/030788.html)

Accordingly I did the following :

1. I set the TEXT_BASE to the address 0x1000000 in board/amcc/canyonlands/config.mk
2. The initdram function in board/amcc/canyonlands/canyonlands.c was left alone as it contained only the following code :
 return CFG_MBYTES_SDRAM << 20;
3.i did not have the file board/xilinx/ml403/u-boot.lds, instead of that, I used the file board/xilinx/ppc440generic/u-boot-ram.lds.


With these changes I compiled the u-boot and it compiled properly.

Then I loaded the bin file using the BDI 3000 to the location 0x1000000, I set rm pc 0x1000100
And entered the command "go".
After this I expected to get the u-boot messages through the serial port on minicom. But I din get anything on minicom.

Could you please guide me as to where I am going wrong?




Thanks & Regards
Afzal Nadirshah| Senior Engineer | MindTree Ltd. Phase - I, Global Village West Campus, RVCE post, Mysore Road, Bangalore - 560059 |
Voice +91 80 26264100 Extn: 66759 / Fax +91 80 2671 4000 | email: afzal_nadirshah at mindtree.com |www.mindtree.com |

-----Original Message-----
From: Stefan Roese [mailto:sr at denx.de]
Sent: Tuesday, January 20, 2009 2:24 PM
To: u-boot@lists.denx.de
Cc: Afzal Nadirshah
Subject: Re: [U-Boot] Flashing u-boot on NAND flash

On Tuesday 20 January 2009, Afzal Nadirshah wrote:
>        I am new to board bring up and I have a few queries.
>        We have a custom board with a PPC 460EX processor and a NAND flash.
> We are using a BDI 3000 JTAG debug interface. My problem is how to load the
> u-boot onto the NAND flash on the fresh board, since the BDI does not
> support writing into NAND flash.

Correct. AFAIK, the BDI doesn't support direct NAND reading/writing.

> Also from the mailing lists I understand
> that it is difficult to execute the u-boot by directly downloading to the
> RAM and executing it.
>        Please guide me on how to approach this.

This is indeed not so easy. Currently there is no 4xx U-Boot target option to
configure the image to boot directly from already configured SDRAM as until
now all 4xx boards were able to boot from NOR FLASH. When only NAND booting
is supported as in your case, you probably need such an configuration option
such as CONFIG_SKIP_LOWLEVEL_INIT which is available on other platforms
(MIPS, ARM).

Best regards,
Stefan

=====================================================================
DENX Software Engineering GmbH,     MD: Wolfgang Denk & Detlev Zundel
HRB 165235 Munich, Office: Kirchenstr.5, D-82194 Groebenzell, Germany
Phone: +49-8142-66989-0 Fax: +49-8142-66989-80  Email: office at denx.de
=====================================================================

http://www.mindtree.com/email/disclaimer.html

[U-Boot] Flashing u-boot on NAND flash

[Stefan Roese]

On Tuesday 20 January 2009, Afzal Nadirshah wrote:
> I was going through the u-boot archives and I came across a reply from
> Leonid (http://lists.denx.de/pipermail/u-boot/2008-March/030788.html)
>
> Accordingly I did the following :
>
> 1. I set the TEXT_BASE to the address 0x1000000 in
> board/amcc/canyonlands/config.mk 2. The initdram function in
> board/amcc/canyonlands/canyonlands.c was left alone as it contained only
> the following code : return CFG_MBYTES_SDRAM << 20;
> 3.i did not have the file board/xilinx/ml403/u-boot.lds, instead of that, I
> used the file board/xilinx/ppc440generic/u-boot-ram.lds.
>
>
> With these changes I compiled the u-boot and it compiled properly.
>
> Then I loaded the bin file using the BDI 3000 to the location 0x1000000, I
> set rm pc 0x1000100 And entered the command "go".
> After this I expected to get the u-boot messages through the serial port on
> minicom. But I din get anything on minicom.
>
> Could you please guide me as to where I am going wrong?

Are you sure that your DDR2 setup in the BDI init script is correct? Did you 
do some basic memory testing via the BDI?

As explained before, this is not a supported config option for PPC4xx. So many 
things could go wrong here. You must make sure for example that no SDRAM init 
code is executed anymore. And perhaps other CPU init stuff has to be removed 
for such an image as well.

Best regards,
Stefan

=====================================================================
DENX Software Engineering GmbH,     MD: Wolfgang Denk & Detlev Zundel
HRB 165235 Munich, Office: Kirchenstr.5, D-82194 Groebenzell, Germany
Phone: +49-8142-66989-0 Fax: +49-8142-66989-80  Email: office at denx.de
=====================================================================