[U-Boot] How to start U-Boot for i.MX31 NAND out of RedBoot (out of RAM)

[Magnus Lilja]

Hi

2009/7/22 Ulrich Gerster <gersteru at dhbw-loerrach.de>:
> Hello
>
>>>>> Magnus Lilja <lilja.magnus at gmail.com> 14.07.09 19.43 Uhr >>>
>> Hi
>
>>>>>2009/7/14 Ulrich Gerster <gersteru at dhbw-loerrach.de>:
>>> Hello.
>>>
>>>>>> Magnus Lilja <lilja.magnus at gmail.com> 14.07.09 16.03 Uhr >>>
>>>
>>>>> I used the patch from you out of this posting:
>>>>> [U-Boot-Users] [PATCH RFC 3/5] i.MX31: Add i.MX31 NAND Flash Controller driver.
>>>>> http://lists.denx.de/pipermail/u-boot/2008-August/038239.html
>>>>>
>>>>> They should work, or not? Do they require something else?
>>>
>>>> I haven't tried that driver on a recent U-boot so I don't know if (or
>>>> how) it will work when applied to a recent U-Boot.
>>>
>>> I'm using the u-boot master release of middle of June.
>>> How can I ensure that your patch is working? Or how do I know what is missing that it works?
>
>> You need to use either a debugger or add printf's to see what's going
>> on (to the mxc_nd.c or whatever the file is called.
>
> I have the drivers working now. But there's a little problem left. When I try to use u-boot to update itself (write itself from RAM to Flash) it seems that it overwrites the out of band information too.

That's normal since writing new data means writing a new error correcting code.

> So when I try to reboot nothing is working because every program assumes that the first blocks are bad.
> Do you have a suggestion how to fix that issue?

Not sure that I understand what "every program assumes..." means. But
my guess is that the OOB layout may be different in
nand_spl/nand_boot_fsl_nfc.c compared to drivers/mtd/nand/mxc_nd.c so
the nand_spl may interpret the OOB information that mxc_nd.c has
written in a different way. This is especially true for large page
NAND since the i.MX31 controller uses a non-standard layout, for small
page NAND there should be no problem (although I don't know if
nand_spl has been tested on small page nand yet).

/Magnus