[PATCH v3 1/6] rockchip: move ROCKCHIP_STIMER_BASE to Kconfig

[Simon Glass]

Hi,

On Sun, 13 Mar 2022 at 06:41, Paweł Jarosz <paweljarosz3691 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Kever,
>
>
> > Thanks for you hard working on this, would you mind to share what's the
> > motivation for support rk3066 and MK808 board?
> > RK3066 is an SoC release at 2012, which has been EOL for a long time,
> > and MK808 is a product at 2013, almost 10 years ago.
>
>
> That is true but at least here at Poland there are still rk3066 devices which
> you can buy. And i don't think it's an exception. There are known cases
> in opensource community of support for hardware much older than 10 years.
> I.e. thanks to Linus Torwalds linux still supports EISA FDDI [1].
> There are at least a few rk3066a SOC users and in the spirit of
> Linus Torvalds' open source principles, adding support for this
> platform is the correct step.
>
> RK3066 is a great soc to play with.
> I use my MK808 for three years now to keep my 3d printer in contact
> with my local network.
> I have been using the URZ0350 as a wifi camera for a long time.
> And guess what! They don't want to break down.
>
> [1] https://blog.desdelinux.net/en/linus-supports-a-device-by-a-user/
>
> > I'm not object for enable more SoC support on the mainline, and I know
> > you have spend a lot
> > of time on this, I have do something like this before, but to be honest
> > I don't think it's a good idea to add support for
> > rk3066 on mainline now.
>
>
> I do not agree.
>
> As long as the world is using armv7 architecture adding support for SOC
> rk3066a is a great and noble idea.
> I personally am working on following up on my and Johan's patches by
> adding support for writing firmware to these devices, using only opensource
> tools like u-boot and rkflashtool. This support can be extended to other
> devices such as rk3399, rk3568 and others. So other SOCs can also benefit
> from adding support for rk3066a.
>
> I also want to add that Linux actively supports rk3066a [2].
> So if linux supports it, U-BOOT SHOULD ALSO!
>
> [2] https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/next/linux-next.git/log/?qt=grep&q=rk3066
>
> I appeal to you Kever Yang in the spirit of opensource, don't give up on
> rk3066a yet. These devices are there and they work!
>
>
> Thanks
> -Paweł
>
> > I merge the patches from Paweł Jarosz many years ago into rockchip local
> > u-boot and make it work,
> > I want to make the branch support as much SoCs as possible at that time.
> > But later I found there is no people to use
> > it, and the U-Boot is getting more and more heavy, old SoC support is
> > the one part people want to clean,
> > for it always bring in more '#if, #else' or something like this clean up
> > series patches, and more terrible thing is how to
> > always maintain the source code works on the old hardware. I do make
> > everything work for a long time at first,
> > but one day my only rk3066 board is broken, and I'm not able to do it
> > anymore.

Actually we have much older devices in U-Boot than that! The key thing
is to have someone maintaining the board.

Regards,
SImon