[U-Boot] Porting uboot to Broadcom 47xx (MIPS)

[U-Boot] Porting uboot to Broadcom 47xx (MIPS)

[Michael Buesch]

Hi,

I'm the author of the Linux SSB subsystem, which implements 95% of the system
bootup code for the Broadcom 47xx MIPS architecture.

I'd like to start porting u-boot to the bcm47xx. (I guess nobody started
with this already?)

Which GIT repository should I base my work on?
I guess this one sounds promising: git://git.denx.de/u-boot-mips.git

I'm happy for any pointers by you guys. :)

-- 
Greetings, Michael.

[U-Boot] Porting uboot to Broadcom 47xx (MIPS)

[ksi at koi8.net]

On Wed, 8 Apr 2009, Michael Buesch wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I'm the author of the Linux SSB subsystem, which implements 95% of the
> system
> bootup code for the Broadcom 47xx MIPS architecture.
> 
> I'd like to start porting u-boot to the bcm47xx. (I guess nobody started
> with this already?)

Did I miss something or Broadcom (or Marvell) already started giving out
their datasheets, less for something more useful without 37 NDAs per each
BGA pin?

I don't understand why we accept any code for all those closed platforms
that no one can even get a rudimentary data without all those NDAs into a
GPL-licensed U-Boot? Especially for those companies that make helluva secret
even of mere PHYs, less something more complex...

If it had been up to me I wouldn't've accepted any of such code into U-Boot.

---
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[U-Boot] Porting uboot to Broadcom 47xx (MIPS)

[Michael Buesch]

On Wednesday 08 April 2009 00:52:07 ksi at koi8.net wrote:
> On Wed, 8 Apr 2009, Michael Buesch wrote:
> 
> > Hi,
> > 
> > I'm the author of the Linux SSB subsystem, which implements 95% of the
> > system
> > bootup code for the Broadcom 47xx MIPS architecture.
> > 
> > I'd like to start porting u-boot to the bcm47xx. (I guess nobody started
> > with this already?)
> 
> Did I miss something or Broadcom (or Marvell) already started giving out
> their datasheets, less for something more useful without 37 NDAs per each
> BGA pin?

Well, there's full sourcecode available for CFE [1] (their crappy bootloader)
and there's a datasheet for the CPU and SDRAM controller (and some more).
I think that's enough to get a proper uboot port.

> I don't understand why we accept any code for all those closed platforms
> that no one can even get a rudimentary data without all those NDAs into a
> GPL-licensed U-Boot? Especially for those companies that make helluva secret
> even of mere PHYs, less something more complex...
> 
> If it had been up to me I wouldn't've accepted any of such code into U-Boot.

I don't think 47xx really is a "closed platform".
Yeah, it's not a fully open platform, because there's little active support
from Broadcom. But there's lots of code and even some documentation around
for this platform.

Don't confuse bcm47xx with bcm43xx.


[1] Modified unofficial fork of CFE:  http://bu3sch.de/gitweb?p=cfe.git;a=summary

-- 
Greetings, Michael.

[U-Boot] Porting uboot to Broadcom 47xx (MIPS)

[Shinya Kuribayashi]

Michael Buesch wrote:
> I'd like to start porting u-boot to the bcm47xx. (I guess nobody started
> with this already?)

Cool.

> Which GIT repository should I base my work on?
> I guess this one sounds promising: git://git.denx.de/u-boot-mips.git

Currentrly u-boot-mips.git is used just as staging purpose for Wolfgang.
Nothing interesting is there, please use git://git.denx.de/u-boot.git,
instead.

Thanks,
-- 
Shinya Kuribayashi
NEC Electronics

[U-Boot] Porting uboot to Broadcom 47xx (MIPS)

[Michael Buesch]

On Wednesday 08 April 2009 01:48:35 Shinya Kuribayashi wrote:
> Currentrly u-boot-mips.git is used just as staging purpose for Wolfgang.
> Nothing interesting is there, please use git://git.denx.de/u-boot.git,
> instead.

Ok thanks. I'll put my temporary development crap into this repository,
which is based on the main u-boot repository:
http://bu3sch.de/gitweb?p=u-boot-bcm47xx.git;a=summary

I'll put bcm47xx development into a separate branch so one can easily diff
between u-boot mainline and the development crap.

-- 
Greetings, Michael.