Bootloaders

> Has anyone successfully used either U-Boot or Redboot on a NON-Linux based system?

Yes, I use u-boot in a variety of configurations.

> More specifically, on a MicroC/OS-II-based system?

You can use u-boot to boot MicroC/OS-II -- although there isn't currently any

__direct__ support for MicroC/OS-II. So if you need u-boot to pass parameters

to your kernel, you'll have to add this support (which BTW isn't a big deal).

If you don't need to pass parameters to the kernel, you can do one of two

things without any custom code in u-boot:

1. Load the kernel, then simply execute a "go" command.

2. Create a "linux" u-boot image file for your MicroC/OS-II kernel.

Option 1: easiest -- you can try this without any os-specific mods to u-boot.

Option 2: u-boot doesn't do anything special for linux -- it simply disables

interrupts and calls the image entry point. So you can "lie" to u-boot and tell

it that your MicroC/OS-II kernel is a linux kernel. With this option you can also

take advantage of u-boot's gzip decompression features. i.e. -- you can compress

your MicroC/OS-II image and u-boot will decompress/load it to the proper ram

address before calling it. You'll need the u-boot mkimage utility for this.

If you have anything special you need to do prior to calling your kernel or you don't

want to lie ;-), (e.g. setting up parameters, relocating special code segments, etc.),

you may want to add support for this in u-boot. To do this you can follow examples

for other supported os types (such as NetBSD, LynxOS, RTEMS, VxWorks, QNX, etc.).

u-boot does provide several features you may find handy:

--kernel image decompression

--epcs read, write, erase

--dhcp, bootp, tftp, nfs download

--serial download srec text or kermit binary

--support for jffs2, cramfs, fat filesystems (read-only)

--flash program/erase

--scripting

Regards,

--Scott