On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 10:19 AM, Paul Menzel <[email protected]> wrote: > Dear Graeme, > > > Am Mittwoch, den 27.01.2010, 09:52 +1100 schrieb Graeme Russ: > > […] > >> To date, I have been doing a lot of work getting a functionaly stable >> boot loader up and running. I ended up choosing U-Boot because it >> appeared to be the most open of all mature boot loaders. > > coreboot also seems to support some boards with the AMD SC520 [1].
Thanks, I will have a look but I think Coreboot is geared more towards a BIOS replacement for mainstream PC motherboards? I am working an a real embedded (custom) board. > >> U-Boot had a >> very old and incomplete x86 / sc520 port which I have put a lot of >> work into maturing and stabalising. Nearly all of this work to date >> has been fed back into the U-Boot source (you can track my progress on >> their mailing list). I am now at the point where I feel confident that >> U-Boot can launch a Linux kernel. >> >> The problem is - I don't know how to proceed. It looks like PPC and >> ARM have very strong embedded followings and there is a lot of >> information out there for people that want to get an embedded kernel >> running on these platforms. x86 seems to be a very poor cousin. >> >> So far, I have cloned the 2.6.33 linux kernel Git repository and >> configured and compiled the kernel. > > Where does Linux stop if you try to boot it? I haven't actually attempted to boot the kernel yet - mostly because I don't really know how. I have confirmed in U-Boot the ability to execute a stand-alone application loaded at a given address in memory (U-Boot has a 'Hello World' example that I have managed to get running). The problem is, U-Boot runs in x86 protected mode, so I would assume U-Boot needs to drop out of protected mode before starting up the kernel in order to allow the kernel to setup the descriptor tables as required. > >> I think my first question is about how to get hardware information >> (RAM layout etc) to the Kernel. It looks like the initial U-Boot >> implementation setup a very basic BIOS which emulated part of the >> traditional PC BIOS. Surely there is a better way to do this. Is the >> Simple Firmware Interface an option? >> >> Any help would be greatly appreciated. > > Sorry I cannot help further. Should not the guys on the U-Boot list know > more about how to get U-Boot and Linux running on a x86 system? I have asked this same question on the U-Boot mailing list. Unfortunately, U-Boot has more traditionally been geared towards PPC and ARM. The only person I know of that ever got U-Boot to boot an x86 kernel has not been active on the U-Boot mailing list for a number of years. > > > Thanks, > > Paul > > > [1] http://www.coreboot.org/Supported_Motherboards > Thanks, Graeme _______________________________________________ Openembedded-devel mailing list [email protected] http://lists.linuxtogo.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openembedded-devel
