[U-Boot-Users] Flash boot issues with MPC8272ADS and PQ2FADS

[Milligan, Keath]

We are using several PQ2FADS-VR and MPC8272ADS boards for a Linux project
and are experiencing a high occurrence of boards that get into a state where
they will not boot or behave erratically during boot.

The symptoms are usually that board continually resets in u-boot. See below
for output examples. In other cases, the system will get to the point of
attempting to load a kernel, but will claim the checksum is bad, or will
start booting the kernel and crash shortly thereafter.

When folks bring me systems in this state, my "fix" has been to replace the
8MB flash SIMM. This usually gets them going again, but I honestly don't
think the SIMM is the real problem. I have one PQ2FADS board that I have put
four different SIMMs in and can not get it to boot. In most other cases, I
can take the "bad" SIMM, put it in another board, reprogram it and it will
work again (for a while).

In all of these cases, we are using known good u-boots (built from
unmodified 1.1.2 source for either the PQ2FADS or MPC8272ADS) and known
good, tested kernels. Typically, users will have been working for weeks
without a problem until they run into this.

Here is the method I am using the program the flash using the BDI2000:

8275>unlock 0xff800000 0x40000 32

8275>erase 0xff800000 0x40000 32
Erasing flash at 0xff800000
Erasing flash at ...
Erasing flash at 0xfffc0000
Erasing flash passed

8275>prog 0xfff00000 u-boot.bin.pq2fads bin
Programming u-boot.bin.pq2fads , please wait ....
Programming flash passed

8275>verify 0xfff00000 u-boot.bin.pq2fads bin
Verifying u-boot.bin.pq2fads , please wait ....
Verifying target memory passed

Is this incorrect?

Any insight or shared experience on this is greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Keath



Output such as this is typical (PQ2FADS output shown, MPC8272ADS output is
similar):

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
---
U-Boot 1.1.2 (Aug  9 2005 - 12:58:57)

MPC8260 Reset Status: Check Stop, External Soft, External Hard

MPC8260 Clock Configuration
 - Bus-to-Core Mult 4x, VCO Div 2, 60x Bus Freq  25-75 , Core Freq 100-300
 - dfbrg 1, corecnf 0x0a, busdf 3, cpmdf 1, plldf 0, pllmf 3
 - vco_out  264000000, scc_clk   66000000, brg_clk   16500000
 - cpu_clk  264000000, cpm_clk  132000000, bus_clk   66000000
 - pci_clk   44000000

CPU:   MPC8260 (HiP7 Rev 11, Mask 0.0 0K49M) at 264 MHz
Board: Motorola PQ2FADS-ZU
DRAM:  32 MB
FLASH:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
---
<reboot happens here>

Sometimes, we will see garbage output to the serial port while this is
happening. Occasionally, we will see some crash dump info, but not usually.
Example:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
---
U-Boot 1.1.2 (Aug  9 2005 - 12:58:57)

MPC8260 Reset Status: External Soft, External Hard

MPC8260 Clock Configuration
 - Bus-to-Core Mult 4x, VCO Div 2, 60x Bus Freq  25-75 , Core Freq 100-300
 - dfbrg 1, corecnf 0x0a, busdf 3, cpmdf 1, plldf 0, pllmf 3
 - vco_out  264000000, scc_clk   66000000, brg_clk   16500000
 - cpu_clk  264000000, cpm_clk  132000000, bus_clk   66000000
 - pci_clk   44000000

CPU:   MPC8260 (HiP7 Rev 11, Mask 0.0 0K49M) at 264 MHz
Board: Motorola PQ2FADS-ZU
DRAM:  32 MB
FLASH:  8 MB
In:    serial
Out:   serial
Err:   serial
Bad trap at PC: 248, SR: 0, vector=800
4NIP: 00000248 XER: 00000000 LR: 01FE64F8 REGS: 01fefea1 TRAP: 0800 DAR:
01FFE04
MSR: 00000000 EE: 0 PR: 0 FP: 1fefea1 ME: 0 IR/DR: 1ffe0240

GPR00: 03FCD7C0 01B88AA0 FFFFFFFF 01B88B5D 01FEFCD3 00000010 FFFFFFFE
00000000
GPR08: 00000001 01FDDAEC 00000000 01FEFCD4 00000030 FFFFFFFF 01FFE000
020C9000
GPR16: FFFFFFFF EFFFFFFF FFFFFFFF FFEFFEFF 00000000 01B889A0 821CDAD8
01FCC098
GPR24: 01B88B50 00000000 00000008 00000000 01B88B62 01B88F6C 00001466
01B88B40
Call backtrace:
01FE64F8 00000010 FFFFFFFE 01B88858 00000041 00000010 00000000
01B889B0 01B889B0 01B889B0 01B889B0
Exception in kernel pc 248 signal 0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
---
<reboot>

As I mentioned above, these are just a couple of examples, output varies
from board to board and boot-attempt to boot-attempt.