[U-Boot-Users] How to Port U-Boot to New Hardware Platform?

[Ben Warren]

--- Haifeng.Wu at infineon.com wrote:

> Hello Ben, 
> 
> Thank you for your advice and I've read through the
> README file in the
> top directory and the Manual on the wiki site.
> Both of them emphasize the configuration for
> different platforms, with
> less on how to port it.
> Here I've found that in the 7th chapter of <Embedded
> Linux Primer> the
> function and basic concept of bootloader is clearly
> explained.
> I hope that it will help those guys like me.
> 
> I've tried to find the most similar board to our
> platform, but I don't
> know where can find more information on the boards
> list in the /configs
> directory.
> Google gives too many useless results, which always
> give just some words
> on it, yet not details.
> 
> Thank you for your help.
> 
> BEST REGRADS AND HAVE A NICE DAY
> 
> WU Haifeng

Porting U-boot is not a trivial task, but neither is
it impossible.  The one thing that I can't stress
strongly enough is that you need to be very familiar
with the hardware on your board.  You need to know
what every chip does and understand its interfaces. 
If you feel you have the necessary skills and are
willing to make the investment in really learning this
stuff, you will find no shortage of help on this list.

Very few people take on the task of building a board
core from scratch.  Most were originally based on some
kind of reference design, and many of those reference
designs are supported in U-boot.  Every board has a
CPU, RAM and some kind of non-volatile storage,
usually parallel NOR flash.  Most have networking
capabilities.  If you can identify these parts, you
can hopefully find a good starting point.  If you're
stuck, send an e-mail listing these parts and somebody
may be able to point you in the right direction.

regards,
Ben