U-Boot support for M68K removal

[Greg Ungerer]

Hi Tom,

On 31/1/23 05:31, Tom Rini wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 30, 2023 at 08:10:36PM +0100, Geert Uytterhoeven wrote:
>> Hi Eero,
>>
>> On Mon, Jan 30, 2023 at 8:02 PM Eero Tamminen <oak at helsinkinet.fi> wrote:
>>> On 30.1.2023 18.34, Tom Rini wrote:
>>>> That's great to hear. While I started my life on m68k machines, I never
>>>> did get Linux up on one. Do the coldfire platforms you have run U-Boot
>>>> today? If so, are they already supported upstream? One of my biggest
>>>> concerns about the architecture, in U-Boot, is that I've just not heard
>>>> of anyone using it in quite some time, and we don't have any emulated
>>>> platforms either (can it be done in QEMU? We have other plaforms in CI
>>>> via QEMU) so I worry it's not working.
>>>
>>> Qemu supports both m68k and ColdFire nowadays:
>>> https://www.qemu.org/docs/master/system/target-m68k.html
>>>
>>>
>>>          - Eero
>>>
>>> PS. For m68k there are also a lot of other emulators that emulate
>>> specific platforms.
>>>
>>> Aranym, 68040 Atari "clone", used a lot by Debian m68k port before Qemu
>>> got m68k support.
>>>
>>> WinAUE, 68000-68040 Amiga emulation.  Unlike Aranym or Qemu, this
>>> emulates also CPU cache.
>>>
>>> Hatari, 68000-68040 Atari emulation (based on WinUAE CPU core).
>>>
>>> Previous, 68030 NeXT emulator (based on Hatari).
>>
>> But none of the platforms listed above boot using U-Boot, which is
>> what Tom is interested in...
>>
>> "qemu-system-m68k -machine help" lists a.o.:
>>
>>      an5206               Arnewsh 5206
>>      mcf5208evb           MCF5208EVB (default)
>>
>> U-Boot still contains include/configs/M5208EVBE.h, but there are no
>> actual users...
>>
>> Angelo: so support for amcore in qemu would be nice ;-)
> 
> I did a little searching after sending and I see there's been some
> patches for mcf5208evb and U-Boot, in QEMU but the last message (2019)
> was that the CPU emulation wasn't quite complete enough.  But yes, one
> way or another, it would be really great to get a virtualized platform
> in CI to prevent future breakage.

FWIW the QEMU emulation of the m5208evb is good enough to run Linux.
I do a lot of kernel testing (and development!) using that.

Regards
Greg