Re: OLinuXino (was: Re: Raspberry PI)

[Petri Laakso <petri.laakso%asd.fi@localhost>]

Few thoughts about future developements. And hey, thank you for your feedback.
I really appreciate it :-)

On Thu, 27 Sep 2012 21:20:06 +0200
Jochen Kunz <jkunz%unixag-kl.fh-kl.de@localhost> wrote:

> On Thu, 27 Sep 2012 10:59:41 +0300
> Petri Laakso <petri.laakso%asd.fi@localhost> wrote:
> 
> > I made simple stand alone binary which initializes clocks, power,
> > DRAM etc. Sort of a boot loader. sys/arch/evbarm/stand/bootimx23
> > on my fossil repo.
> Ahh, OK. I missd that at first sight. So you don't use the Freescale
> bootlets and do the stuff yourself. That's good because it creats no
> additional dependencies.

I'd like see some day that bootimx23 is able to load kernel from the NetBSD 
partition
on the SD card. Would make kernel upgrades very easy as user doesn't need
to learn about elftosb. It could be possible after we learn how actually to use 
MMC/SD
interface in the kernel (to mount root for example)
Armed with that experience, it would be easier to work on same stuff in 
bootloader.

Once in a while bootloader gets stuck. Possibly because some brownouts on SoC 
power
lines or whatever reasons. Bootloader most likely needs an another look, but 
for now
it does its job.

> You have done all the nasty low level stuff (that I don't like ;-)
> already.

After nasty stuff was done and I'd look into -current I saw this 
arm32/arm32_kvminit.c
which seems to provide an interface to do that all nasty stuff which all these 
evbarm/*/*_machdep.c
usually do. I like the idea.

> 
> I sugest this as the next steps:
> - You keep hacking on the kernel stuff. :-)

Yup, next step is to integrate *spl() stuff with interrupt controller to
make clocks tick.

> - I'll commit it to the NetBSD CVS repository, if the portmaster has no
>   objections. It is very early stuff and unfinished. But I like to get
>   it into the official CVS repository early to ensure that nothing gets
>   lost and to give others an easy way to contribute.

That's the start. "Scaffoldings" are in place so it is relatively
easy to dive in and make improvements.

And for people who are not familiar with OLinuXino we are talking about,
these are relatively cheap devkits build around ARM926EJ-S core and
with 64 megs of RAM. iMX233-OLinuXino-MICRO looks very exciting part
because its price and loaded with NetBSD (Lua + GPIO) it could control
almost anything ;-)

https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/iMX233/

--
Petri Laakso