>> while NAND has just 10^9 cycles ... that means ... the more you write >> to NAND sooner your NAND will die ... and NAND is soldered inside your >> AKITA/SPITS while mirodrive is simply "installed" inside or in the CF >> slot > > More probably 10^6
you are right 10^6 is the "real" life-write-cycles of 2000-2006 NAND flash so i was too much optimistic about old flash =( > It has 8MB PROM with bootloader, diagnostics and English-Japanese > dictionary. > PROM bootloader->NAND bootloader (reads initial blocks of NAND and your > key presses)->kernel 1 or kernel 2->linux ok, this make sense: the PXA270 first fetches the PROM which has the right code to access the NAND, so it "jumps" to it and things go as we know > Im Angstrom: kernel 1 = kexecboot -> kernel anywhere you want -> linux > It is technically possible to replace NAND bootloader by anything else, > but I guess that nobody succeeded yet. I am afraid that kernel drivers > are not ready for it. Some drivers depend on initial settings done by > the bootloader (e. g. LCD phase settings). >> (akita has only 1.6Mbyte available for this kind of magic, the more >> byte you save from your kernel final zImage'size, the more features >> you can add in your userspace app) > > For _this_ kind of magic you have nearly whole 128MB. If you want to > stay with kernel 1 boot, then you have 1.6MB. umm let me understand this part: do you mean by jtag, just to shortcut things directly (jtag download byte directly into flash) ? i am supporting a ppc405GP board which has all the firmware in flash ... so i had to think about "Recovering a bricked board, using OCD Jtag programmer" anybody has ever thought anything similar for akita ? Akita should have a jtag on his back, and jtag should be directly connected to PXA270 ... so it should be as standard as a pretty ARM databook should explain. what i have not understand is: 1) is the flash area partitioned with slot0=1.6Mb, slot1=therest/whatever, and we can't re partion it into a whole 128Mb slot cause ...cause if we did it than we loose the nandutils&C that slot1 contains, so we loose a pretty procedure to re-flash if things go bad ? 2) could we bypass it, just using jtag ? 1.6Mb is a pain in ... while i wish i could have 8Mb (or more) to handle a good (and nicer) bootloader + first aid kit (fsck, badblocks, RTC tools ... etc etc ... everything should be pretty useful for a pretty UNIX net install /maintenance/support) about my kexec-netboot, here is a shot-proof of concept (i need this bootloader, cause i net download the first aid kit into so call "early ram rootfs", also i like this bootloader cause i can test newkernel easier) [*] akita launching rtshelld ... listening for any client launching local-shell ... stdio=uart,9600-nullmodem [ .k.a.n.o.j.o. ] kexec boot loader v01.2, 2010-01-28 # # cmdlist cod name help not yet impemented 231 help 230 cmdlist 252 ver 232 macaddr 233 tcpscan 234 ifconfig 235 endian 236 ttftp 239 rtshell 240 exec 237 printenv 238 saveenv 239 setenv 240 boot 254 255 reset 255 shutdown # printenv env.root="/dev/hda3,ro" env.fstype="ext3" env.console="console=ttyS0,9600" env.eth0="192.168.1.11 255.255.255.0" env.ttftp_server_ip="192.168.1.14" env.ttftp_server_port="2000" env.timeout="no" env.boot="net" env.bootfile="alita--kernel-2.6.23-ramrootfs.img" env.net="ttftp $ttfpt_server_ip $ttftp_server_port $bootfile autoexec" # boot connect(): Connection refused, no ttftp server found # tcpscan 192.168.1.13 1 2050 TCP port scanning connect_port={ 22 23} # tcpscan $ttfpt_server_ip 1 2050 connect_port={ 22 23 80 111 443 2001 2049 } #setenv ttftp_server_port 2001 #saveenv not yet implemented #boot downloading alita--kernel-2.6.23-ramrootfs.img .............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. booting _______________________________________________ Zaurus-devel mailing list Zaurus-devel@lists.linuxtogo.org http://lists.linuxtogo.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/zaurus-devel