[U-Boot-Users] Altera Stratix II

[eran liberty]

On Fri, Feb 29, 2008 at 11:18 PM, Wolfgang Denk <wd at denx.de> wrote:
> In message <ffc2b1d40802291156o65bd167el8586288c5c07df3b at mail.gmail.com> you wrote:
> > As part of my current ongoing effort to get up to date with rc2 I will
> > produce a patch that will apply cleanly against that in a few a days.
>
> In a few days we will have at least -rc3, if not 1.3.2.
>
> > Flash memory size.
> > On all the versions till now I have cheated U-boot to believe I have a
> > 16M flash though the real flash was of sizes 32,64,128,256, and 512.
> > This suited my goals very nicely because i could have a generic binary
> > u-boot image for all my products. As cfi_flash.c grew up it started
>
> I cannot understand why this should be necessary. we've  always  been
> using the same U-Boot image no matter what the flash or RAM size was.
> Actually  this  is  a  major  design  philosophy  of  U-Boot *not* to
> hardcode memory sizes butto  automatically  deal  with  te  sizes  it
> actually finds on the board.
>
> > Currently I am adopting RC2 and is having trouble making u-boot do
> > What I want (and not the other way around).
>
> I think what you're trying to do is fundamentally broken.  Why  don't
> you  use  the  real sizes present on the hardware? Why do you want to
> lie to yourself and to your users?
>

I have more then one way to answer this question some are more
philosophical then others, But I will choose the bare hardware
approach... we "hide" some backup information on the flash. We make
sure the user can not access this hiden info by physically lifting the
flash legs (there is a programmable part between the flash and the cpu
on the bus). So though there may be a 64Mb flash the user really have
a 32Mb. It is, in fact, the flash eeprom which lies to the u-boot /
linux.
Any attempt to access these non existing address will lead to bus
fault exactly as if the flash was a 32Mb (which in many sense it is).
So, again, it is important for me to tell u-boot "go ahaed and use
CFI, but dont listen to the eeporm cuz he doesn't know what he is
talking about".

Liberty
>
> Best regards,
>
> Wolfgang Denk
>
> --
> DENX Software Engineering GmbH,     MD: Wolfgang Denk & Detlev Zundel
> HRB 165235 Munich, Office: Kirchenstr.5, D-82194 Groebenzell, Germany
> Phone: (+49)-8142-66989-10 Fax: (+49)-8142-66989-80 Email: wd at denx.de
> ...though his invention worked superbly -- his theory was a crock  of
> sewage from beginning to end.         - Vernor Vinge, "The Peace War"
>