3 The README is for the boot procedure used for TI's OMAP-L138 based
4 hawkboard. The hawkboard comes with a 128MiB Nand flash and a 128MiB
5 DDR SDRAM along with a host of other controllers.
7 The hawkboard is booted in three stages. The initial bootloader which
8 executes upon reset is the Rom Boot Loader(RBL) which sits in the
9 internal ROM of the omap. The RBL initialises the memory and the nand
10 controller, and copies the image stored at a predefined location(block
11 1) of the nand flash. The image loaded by the RBL to the memory is the
12 AIS signed spl image. This, in turns copies the u-boot binary from the
13 nand flash to the memory and jumps to the u-boot entry point.
15 AIS is an image format defined by TI for the images that are to be
16 loaded to memory by the RBL. The image is divided into a series of
17 sections and the image's entry point is specified. Each section comes
18 with meta data like the target address the section is to be copied to
19 and the size of the section, which is used by the RBL to load the
20 image. At the end of the image the RBL jumps to the image entry
23 The secondary stage bootloader(spl) which is loaded by the RBL then
24 loads the u-boot from a predefined location in the nand to the memory
25 and jumps to the u-boot entry point.
27 The reason a secondary stage bootloader is used is because the ECC
28 layout expected by the RBL is not the same as that used by
29 u-boot/linux. This also implies that for flashing the spl image,we
30 need to use the u-boot which uses the ECC layout expected by the
31 RBL[1]. Booting u-boot over UART(UART boot) is explained here[2].
36 Three images might be needed
38 * spl - This is the secondary bootloader which boots the u-boot
41 * u-boot binary - This is the image flashed to the nand and copied to
42 the memory by the spl.
44 Both the images get compiled with hawkboard_config, with the TOPDIR
45 containing the u-boot images, and the spl image under the spl
48 The spl image needs to be processed with the AISGen tool for
49 generating the AIS signed image to be flashed. Steps for generating
50 the AIS image are explained here[3].
52 * u-boot for uart boot - This is same as the u-boot binary generated
53 above, with the sole difference of the CONFIG_SYS_TEXT_BASE being
54 0xc1080000, as expected by the RBL.
59 Flashing the images to Nand
60 ===========================
61 The spl AIS image needs to be flashed to the block 1 of the Nand
62 flash, as that is the location the RBL expects the image[4]. For
63 flashing the spl, boot over the u-boot specified in [1], and flash the
66 => tftpboot 0xc0700000 <nand_spl_ais.bin>
67 => nand erase 0x20000 0x20000
68 => nand write.e 0xc0700000 0x20000 <nand_spl_size>
70 The u-boot binary is flashed at location 0xe0000(block 6) of the nand
71 flash. The spl loader expects the u-boot at this location. For
72 flashing the u-boot binary
74 => tftpboot 0xc0700000 u-boot.bin
75 => nand erase 0xe0000 0x40000
76 => nand write.e 0xc0700000 0xe0000 <u-boot-size>
83 http://code.google.com/p/hawkboard/downloads/detail?name=u-boot_uart_ais_v1.bin
86 http://elinux.org/Hawkboard#Booting_u-boot_over_UART
89 http://elinux.org/Hawkboard#Signing_u-boot_for_UART_boot
92 http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/RBL_UBL_and_host_program#RBL_booting_from_NAND_and_ECC.2FBad_blocks