[U-Boot] Re-introducing support for OLD hardware

[Tom Rini]

On Thu, Apr 12, 2018 at 09:04:20AM +0200, Jason Mitchell wrote:
> Good day all
> 
> I am currently faced with a task of having to run new software on ageing
> hardware. We have currently about 1000 units in the field of a machine that
> runs Windows CE using the Samsung S3C6410.
> 
> Because these are considerable assets its not a simple case of replacing
> them with new, more modern hardware.
> 
> The goal is to be able to get these existing boards to run Ubuntu so that
> we can run GoLang applications, so we need the GUI with just a relatively
> recent browser.
> 
> The board in question is a near perfect clone of the SMDK6410, which was
> supported fully in U-boot in the past, indeed I can select SMDK6410 and
> compile a working U-boot using 1.3.4 sources
> 
> After much effort I managed to get a tailored (tailored as in having
> changed the memory configuration to match the hardware) U-boot V1.3.4
> compiled and running for this chip, the problem now, obviously we have a
> fairly recent Linux kernel compiled and it won't boot because the Device
> Tree Blob doesn't exist on such an old version of U-boot.
> 
> So my questions are:
> 
> - Has anyone perhaps created a branch or fork of the current or nearly
> current version of U-boot and patched in this support. I see a lot of
> Chinese websites where they seem to have done this but the language barrier
> is a big problem. Also a lot of dead links are another problem.
> 
> - If there isn't something out there, would it be possible to run through
> the steps with me to add support for this CPU again. I don't mind doing the
> work, the main issue is I have no clue how U-boot actually works internally.
> 
> I have FULL JTAG access to this board, with a perfectly functional OpenOCD
> setup. This is how we are able to program versions of U-boot into the FLASH.

There's two options:
1) You can re-introduce support for the SMDK6410 into mainline U-Boot
and be an active maintainer of it.  It was removed due to lack of active
maintainers.

2) You can, for Linux, use the "appended DTB" work-around to boot a
modern kernel from an old bootloader.

-- 
Tom
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 819 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.denx.de/pipermail/u-boot/attachments/20180412/86d3e7a0/attachment.sig>