[U-Boot-Users] Loading from a CF card on the PCMCIA interface

[Holger Schurig]

> But I would not like to see this integrated into U-Boot. If you  want
> to do this, implement it as a U-Boot standalone application, that can
> be used as second stage boot loader.

I know a proprietary bootloader where the bootloader first checks the IDE-Card 
in the PCMCIA slot. If found, he takes the NK.BIN file from there (sounds 
like Windows CE, doesn't it) and handles it.

With "handles" I mean: depending on the addresses used in the NK.BIN the 
bootloader would simply put it in RAM and execute it, reflash the Linux 
kernel+filesystem in Flash or even reflash the bootloader. As you might have 
deducted, you can have anything in an NK.BIN file, it's just a bunch of 
(address offset, length, data bytes) tuples concatenated.


I find the integration into the bootloader very handy, especially once you 
deployed your systems but you still need to do updates. Absolutely no user 
intervention when it comes to reflashing ...