Thomas
Thanks a lot for your very valuable answers !
I do understand a lot more now.
I hope not to use Microtronix and thus I'll be able to able to have
initramfs.
You can use another partition on the same chip for jffs2 to store user
data.
Great ! So no problems here.
You can even setup multiple partitions for additional fpga
configuration and programs, for recovering (in case of upgrading
failed), like that of remote configuration, called by Altera.
I read about this in the Altera appnotes, Of course we will use the FPGA
configuration remote upgrade feature. I understand that you should have
a fixed workable FPGA configuration on address 0 and in that there is a
pointer to some other address where the FPGA bitstream really to be used
is found. The FPGA automatically loads this one but if something is
wrong (i.e. watchdog reset occurs) the default configuration is loaded.
So I suppose the first partition contain the default fpga configuration
data (and a boot loader from Altera), the second the second contains the
actual FPGA configuration data (and the boot loader ), the third
contains the compressed kernel image plus root directory initramfs, and
the forth (and maybe fifth) contain jffs2 user file systems. (1) is
never updated, (2) and (3) can be written as a whole (using the MTD
driver directly), (4..) can be written file by file in user mode. Correct ?
You can find all the details in nios wiki.
I'll have a look.
I think you could borrow a Nios dev board from your FAE. You can use
Cyclone I or Cyclone II to get some hand on experiments. They are
almost the same as Cyclone III. This can save you some time, as it
looks like your projects will start soon.
Well meet very soon and hopefully in January, I'll have a Cyclone II
board to play with. Our custom board is rather complex, so we'll do a
lot of tests (hardware and software) using the dev board before starting
the PCB layout.
Eclipse is not magic. I don't use Eclipse myself. I think many people
on the list don't use Eclipse, either. Most of our tools are command
line based. They are much faster and more reliable than an IDE.
In all publications they say that Eclipse is _the_ future SDK base. And
many companies provide or announced Eclipse based development tools,
dropping their propriety stuff. So I think we should invest some work in
that issue. (While Eclipse itself is horribly slow, in the end it just
calls "make" and same runs just as fast as when called from the command
line. So no real problem here.)
I did try to _use_ Eclipse with other projects, as well, but never was
able to do any productive work with it up to now, due to non workable
installations. So it does seem like magic to me. I don't (want to) do
Java stuff and thus I only (want to) use readily prepared Eclipse SDKs.
Up till now none of the three completely different kits from different
companies for different processors was workable (I was not able to do
many tests with the Microtronix stuff, as I did not have a NIOS board
and only could see it running as a demo drive on the FAE's laptop.
Linux on FPGA is very different from other hard chips. As you got the
ability to define custom hardware, you got more chances to write
drivers. You should spend your time on FPGA and Linux internal. Rather
than believe that Eclipse can save you.
OK, But we are a team of at least two. One will do the FPGA stuff,
another one will do the Linux internal / driver work and maybe on the
long run there will be a third person who does user software. So at
least one will benefit from a decent SDK.
But (other than with PC Linux), on NIOS - due to the hardware interface
- I will have the full blown debug features in Kernel mode. So a
graphical debugger should help a lot with Kernel work as well.
I use graphical Debuggers since more than 10 years (with a hardware
"emulator" box for embedded 68K stuff and with "Delphi" on the PC). So
I'm rather spoiled with the features I expect a debugger is to provide.
(They should be similar to what Delphi (or M$-"Studio") offer.)
I suppose the stuff Lauterbach offers for NIOS would please me most, but
right now I can't justify the $$ (€€ <g>).
Thanks again,
-Michael
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