You are correct in that the boot process is different on the TS-7500 and
TS-7800. We have proprietary boot code in the FPGA that is used to load the
kernel from the desired medium and then start executing which in turn ends up
in the fastboot shell. The fastboot shell is equivalent to a RedBoot/U-Boot
shell and is much much much more flexible since it is a full busybox bash shell
and linux kernel.
The bootloader on both of these is designed to parse a partition table and dump
the kernel partition of an SD card to memory and then jump to the start of
memory where it is located. If you can create a blind executable that will
just happily execute in place at 0x2180_0000 you can use that in place of the
kernel image.
If you are interested in this as a learning experience than more power to you.
But if you are trying to get more flexibility out of the system, I highly doubt
either of those bootloaders will be able to provide functionality that our
bootloader cannot. I would be happy to help you accomplish your goals using
our shell.
-Kris Bahnsen
Technologic Systems
--- In "THeng5243" <> wrote:
>
> Hello Everyone,
>
> I'm considering purchasing a TS board for educational purposes to play with
> OS fundamentals which would require access to the bare metal. I was wondering
> if anyone out there has been able to load U-Boot or Redboot onto the
> 7500/7800 series, or if anyone could comment on if it is possible.
>
> From what I can tell from past posts this has only been tried on the 7200
> series, but the boot process seems slightly different on the newer boards. I
> assume that if I can compile a U-Boot/redboot kernel and rootfs and load it
> onto the correct SD/flash partitions it should work but I'm not sure if this
> is an oversimplification on my part.
>
> Any guidance or recommended documentation that I should look at would be most
> helpful!
>
> Thanks,
>
> Tai
>
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