On Thu, Apr 12, 2018 at 09:04:20AM +0200, Jason Mitchell wrote: > Good day all > > I am currently faced with a task of having to run new software on ageing > hardware. We have currently about 1000 units in the field of a machine that > runs Windows CE using the Samsung S3C6410. > > Because these are considerable assets its not a simple case of replacing > them with new, more modern hardware. > > The goal is to be able to get these existing boards to run Ubuntu so that > we can run GoLang applications, so we need the GUI with just a relatively > recent browser. > > The board in question is a near perfect clone of the SMDK6410, which was > supported fully in U-boot in the past, indeed I can select SMDK6410 and > compile a working U-boot using 1.3.4 sources > > After much effort I managed to get a tailored (tailored as in having > changed the memory configuration to match the hardware) U-boot V1.3.4 > compiled and running for this chip, the problem now, obviously we have a > fairly recent Linux kernel compiled and it won't boot because the Device > Tree Blob doesn't exist on such an old version of U-boot. > > So my questions are: > > - Has anyone perhaps created a branch or fork of the current or nearly > current version of U-boot and patched in this support. I see a lot of > Chinese websites where they seem to have done this but the language barrier > is a big problem. Also a lot of dead links are another problem. > > - If there isn't something out there, would it be possible to run through > the steps with me to add support for this CPU again. I don't mind doing the > work, the main issue is I have no clue how U-boot actually works internally. > > I have FULL JTAG access to this board, with a perfectly functional OpenOCD > setup. This is how we are able to program versions of U-boot into the FLASH.
There's two options: 1) You can re-introduce support for the SMDK6410 into mainline U-Boot and be an active maintainer of it. It was removed due to lack of active maintainers. 2) You can, for Linux, use the "appended DTB" work-around to boot a modern kernel from an old bootloader. -- Tom
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