[U-Boot] Atheros AR7141 MIPS support

Drassal, Allan drasal at wsu.edu
Sun Aug 12 08:26:42 CEST 2012


If this is not the correct place to post this, please direct to a more appropriate place, as most of the traffic I see on this list is for commits and patches.

I am currently working with a device that has lost its boot loader and attempting to reload the device.
I have full debug access through the JTAG (openocd 0.4.0) connection, halt, run, etc... I can load and execute anything in RAM, but having a lot of difficulty finding executable relocateable code that I can execute from RAM.

The original bootloader is RedBoot (but I don't see any reason I can't run DAS U-Boot instead), and I have an identical fully functioning device I can use for reference.  Without the bootloader, even the internal switch seems not to function as expected.  Link lights do not respond to the presence of an active network connection.

I would like to get a u-boot executing from RAM, then use this to reload the firmware, which I have a copy of, into the FLASH memory through TFTP or loading from RAM then copying from RAM to FLASH.

I believe there is support for the AR7161 MIPS architecture, but having difficulty finding many sources for information, most of the resources assume the boot loader is currently working and provides instructions for working inside the bootloader after it is booted.

The other difficulty I am having is being able to actually build from the sources.  I have done a lot of work with the Marvell ARM based DreamPlug and SheevaPlug and have no trouble recovering these devices, and have a toolchain built for ARM (arm-elf).  I built a mips-elf toolchain today, but still seem to be having difficulty building a proper uboot for this platform.  Any assistance would be appreciated.

These are the specifications on the specific device that I am working with:
wzr-hp-ag300h

Some specifications can be found here:
http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/buffalo/wzr-hp-ag300h
http://infodepot.wikia.com/wiki/Buffalo_WZR-HP-AG300H

CPU  Atheros AR7161
CPU Speed  680 MHz
Flash Size = 2 flash, 16MB each, 32MB total
RAM  128 MB


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