[U-Boot-Users] How much does U-Boot Replace PMON? Anyone w/ opinions? (from embedded newbie)

[Andrew Dyer]

On Feb 10, 2008 1:57 PM, Wolfgang Denk <wd at denx.de> wrote:
> > > is not in the best of shape).  That being said, we boot a
>
> There is a number of MIPS  board  that  are  working  pretty  well  -
> Andrew: what exactly do you mean by "not in the best of shape"?

AFAIK the current low level code is pretty specific to one processor -
some Infineon chip used on one of the ports.  It kinda works on a few
others.  There are a number of problems extending that to 'all MIPS'
or even just MIPS32 compatible parts: cache init/cache handling, CP0
handling, hardcoded checks for denx toolchain, and probably a few
others that I've forgotten.

That said, I mean no disrespect to Shinya and other maintainers, I
think Shinya is doing a great job.  We've discussed these issues, and
it'll just take time and effort to clean up what's there.  U-boot is
the bootloader for PPC, but for MIPS many people use RedBoot or YAMON
or CFE or pmon, depending on what their eval board came with, so it's
a smaller user base.

> Seems to work for you?

It does, but we started from a patch for the Au1500 that made it a lot
easier.  I think you also know I've submitted a fair number of bug
fixes and patches for stuff along the way.

As far as getting the job done, since he has a platform that already
suits most of his needs, it seems like adding basic ATA support and
FAT support to that in C code would be easier than trying to work
through the low-level issues with the u-boot MIPS code on a proc that
is not supported.  (Particularly if he doesn't have access to good
debugging tools, or is not well versed in the low-level arch details)

-- 
Hardware, n.:
        The parts of a computer system that can be kicked.