--- In "Blair" <> wrote:
>
> Isn't "stable" a debatable term? Clearly bugs were fixed in later releases.
> Just sayin'
Sorry , I should not have used an ambiguous term. I meant stable as in
unchanging, not as in bug free.
>
> Actually, I don't boot to full Debian. It takes too long. I'm running my
> app off the Busybox level. The 7350 doesn't have any flash memory so
> everything is loaded off the SD card. The kernel image file lives in one of
> the partitions. So expanding on what you're saying about the SD card stuff
> being on the FPGA I guess that would make sense that it isn't required by the
> kernel because how would the hardware know how to load the image?
>
> Looking at the 7350 startup script, I can see that it loads
> ts7000_nand.ko, tssdcard.ko, xuart7350.ko, tsuart1.ko, and tsuart7350.ko
> before it does anything else. So correct me if I'm wrong here but if I have
> these drivers I should be fine. I'll need to find out if I need to build
> these against the later kernel. And then of course are the sources
> compatible with building against the later kernel?
You still don't seem to fully understand the boot sequence (and I don't have
the time to read up on it for you).
Before it can run a script it has to have a running kernel and at least a
trivial root file system which includes the script.
If there's no flash where is the boot rom, what is the first thing that happens
to this dead bit of electronics when you power on?
ts7000_nand.ko , this maybe a general script used in several models but this is
clearly for nand flash. The 72xx loads a couple of irrelevant modules too.
tssdcard.ko , this is the one that could give you trouble. It's closed source,
though I think recent kernels include open source sd support, so it's probably
not a stopper.
I think to move forwards you will need to fully understand the boot sequence
from power-on.
>
>
> --- In "j.chitte" <j.chitte@> wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> > --- In "Blair" <bburtan65@> wrote:
> > >
> > > Everything on the 7350 runs off the SD card so I kinda need that working.
> > > One problem I have is trying to figure out what kernel features have
> > > been replaced as opposed to added. In looking at this now, I run
> > > menuconfig for 21 and 24 side-by-side and try to turn on/off the right
> > > things. Sure you find new stuff but you also find things have been taken
> > > out that were turned on in 21 and I don't know where to look to find out
> > > if that missing feature might be a show-stopper. Trial and error is a
> > > huge time-suck.
> > >
> > > It too bad that TS doesn't upgrade the versions. After all, they know
> > > their hardware better than anyone and what it took to get to the current
> > > release.
> > >
> >
> > To be fair to TS I think you have to realise what embedded is all about.
> > It's about a stable product not on-off systems.
> >
> > If a company invests R&D effort in a board for a product they NEED a stable
> > product more than frequent updates and new features.
> >
> > You need SD to finish booting to debian image on SD from the initial boot
> > which seems to be a small initrd image. SD is controlled by the FPGA so the
> > boot kernel much have a module to communicate with that array. That seems
> > to be your missing link.
> >
> > Find out how 7350 uses the FPGA to give it access to SD and build a recent
> > kernel with this capablility.
> >
> > The proprietary SD stuff should be in FPGA and so TS don't need to worry
> > about source non disclosure. I would expect the kernel module to
> > communicate with the array should be available as source.
> >
> > I'm guessing here because I don't know 7350. You should !
> >
> > Dig the doc and understand the boot mechanism up to the point where it
> > hands over to the SD card. I think you should be able to do that with a
> > recent kernel.
> >
> > You could also ask the question directly of TS as to what areas you need to
> > look at and if there are any steps you are likely to get blocked by the
> > need of proprietory source code.
> >
>
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