[Arm-netbook] EOMA68 booting process

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

On Thu, Mar 9, 2017 at 3:46 PM, mike.valk at gmail.com <mike.valk at gmail.com> wrote:

thanks for the explanation, mike.

> So for EOMA we must set/invent a standard which Installers can use
> regardless the SoC type used in the EOMA card.

 ah.  right.  the way i see it, the only thing that needs to happen is
that the card has to have enough on-board storage to get to u-boot (or
similar) where it can then recognise the EOMA68 I2C EEPROM (and get
the ID info) or for it to (pretty much) always boot externally and do
the same.

anything beyond tthat needs to be analysed *really* carefully, right
through its impllications down the *entire* lifecycle.  which is why i
currently have it as (pretty much) "card must self-boot and must adapt
to EOMA68 EEPROM ID" and it's left as generically as that

> On A20 et.al. there is the FEL mode. Which is initialized by that first
> loaded program.

 from ROM.

> In this FEL mode you can push an image over USB-OTG. But
> that requires an active USB host not just an USB thumb drive.

 i do this all the time.  i don't develop for the A20 in any other
way.  when i see the shit that people get themselves into *even though
usb-fel was written years ago* by trying to un-fuck their systems
using LIVESHIT.EXE and other crap i'm just... staggered and genuinely
confused.

 it's *real* simple and needs just *seven* lines of bash script:

fel write 0x2000 ./fel-boot-spl-EOMA68_A20_2GB.bin
sleep 1
fel exe 0x2000
sleep 1
fel write 0x4a000000 u-boot.new.bin
sleep 1
fel exe 0x4a000000

the fel-boot-spl.bin is actually the u-boot-spl.bin executable that's
compiled by default in u-boot if you select "CONFIG_SPL".  the
u-boot.new.bin is u-boot without the spl part tacked onto the front.

it really couldn't be simpler.  you can if you want directly upload
the linux kernel, script.bin, dtb file, initramdisk WHATEVER YOU LIKE
directly into memory and then execute it DIRECTLY.  you don't even
need u-boot to do it.


> http://linux-sunxi.org/FEL/USBBoot#Booting_U-Boot_over_USB
> http://linux-sunxi.org/BROM
>
> So the question is are "we" going to build such a thing?

 i'm yet to be convinced that it's necessary, beyond adapting u-boot
and the linux kernel to read and adapt to the ID in the EOMA68 EEPROM.
what specifically did you have in mind?

l.

>
>>
>>
>> -- hendrik
>>
>>
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