Re: [microblaze-uclinux] hardware platform

[John Williams <jwilliams@itee.uq.edu.au>]

emanuel stiebler wrote:

> You're right. I would consider a Virtex board my choice for ucLinux ...

Probably, although in the long run we certainly intend to get useful 
uclinux-based embedded systems running on spartans as well - but it 
might be a bit tight as a starting point.

>> There's nothing specific about this board that makes it a "must have" 
>> for uclinux- it's just what I had available.
> 
> I just thought it would be easier to have the same board for the start ...

Sure - if you need to buy a virtex2 based board, you could do a lot 
worse than this one.  Other than a few typos in the manuals (aargh! :) 
it's been pretty good to us.

 >> Translating the hardware target (mbvanilla) to work on a different
>> board should be straight forward, as long it has reasonably similar 
>> (or better) capabilities (RAM, Flash, RS232, ethernet etc).  
>> Ulitmately having this going on a diverse range of physical platforms 
>> will be a good thing to demonstrate.
> 
> I have one of my own lying somewhere around, I have to check the 
> schematics again. (SpartanII, 300e, with SDRAM, SRAM & FLash)

If this Spartan can support a microblaze with an external memory 
controller, timer, interrupt controller and a uart lite, then in 
principle it can run uclinux.  They are the "required peripherals" so far.

>> Yes - I'm running direct from SRAM for now, haven't got around to 
>> using the DDR on the Insight board.  
> 
> Do You expect any problems ?

No, but then again, I never do! :)

Seriously though I think it should be fine, I simply haven't got around 
to building a hardware target with the OPB DDR contoller yet.  On the 
uclinux side it should be pretty straight forward, I'd just create a new 
platform version and set the memory map accordingly.  uclinux is kind of 
nice like that, once you know where to start.

> I know ;-)

Cool - what's your uclinux background, if I may ask?

>> Running the kernel and application code from flash, and other tricky 
>> things are all in the pipeline, but for now it's a matter of priorities, 
> 
> 
> So, you still have to download the kernel via RS232 ?

Sort of.  I have hacked some tcl scripts that allow me to dump a 
kernel/fs image into flash, and a trivial bootloader for BRAM that 
copies the image from flash to ram and launches, so technically speaking 
my board can self-boot.  However, since the kernel work is still 
continuing, I pretty much need to upload a new image over RS232 for each 
debug cycle.

Once we get network support happening it will be a completely different 
story... but one thing at a time :)

John

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