Forum Discussion

Altera_Forum's avatar
Altera_Forum
Icon for Honored Contributor rankHonored Contributor
19 years ago

Building uCLinux with no CFI flash

I'm trying to get uCLinux running on a Nios processor on a Cyclone II DSP dev board. (not the Cyclone II Nios dev board) I am using the uCLinuxDist from the wiki, running on Ubuntu in VMWare, and have previously successfully built and run uCLinux on a Cyclone Nios dev board.

The Cyclone II DSP board doesn't have a compact flash interface on board. Altera doesn't provide the netlist for the board (which I am going to try to get from them), so I can't alter the board description to add a dummy CFI interface as is recommended in the wiki.

I am going to be running the kernel from the DDR2 SDRAM during development. Once we deploy, the zImage will be included in the EPCS configuration device, as described at

epcsguide (http://nioswiki.jot.com/wikihome/operatingsystems/epcsguide).

So I can't add a CFI to the system PTF, leading to me being unable to build uCLinux, because it needs a CFI for the "upload location" during make linux hw_select. As far as I can tell, the upload location/flash device is only used to be added to nios2_system.h, and is not needed for anything else.

So my question is, how can I modify the hw_select and the remaining build process to not require a flash device?

(I have had a look at the hw_select.pl and gen_nios2_system.h.pl files, but I don't really want to learn perl just to figure this issue out.)

Regards,

Josh

4 Replies

  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
    Icon for Honored Contributor rankHonored Contributor
    19 years ago

    You can add a dummy tristate bus bridge and CFI to make a fake ptf, which will be used for hwselect only. It should not be used to generate hardware and sof.

  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
    Icon for Honored Contributor rankHonored Contributor
    19 years ago

    --- Quote Start ---

    originally posted by hippo@Jul 19 2006, 08:23 PM

    you can add a dummy tristate bus bridge and cfi to make a fake ptf, which will be used for hwselect only. it should not be used to generate hardware and sof.

    <div align='right'><{post_snapback}> (index.php?act=findpost&pid=17022)

    --- quote end ---

    --- Quote End ---

    hippo

    &#20320;&#22909;&#65292;&#20320;&#20250;&#35828;&#27721;&#35821;&#21527;&#65311;&#36825;&#20010;&#38382;&#39064;&#25105;&#20063;&#36935;&#21040;&#20102;&#65292;&#20320;&#33021;&#29992;&#27721;&#35821;&#24110;&#25105;&#35299;&#37322;&#19968;&#19979;&#21527;&#65311;
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
    Icon for Honored Contributor rankHonored Contributor
    19 years ago

    If your system is completed to your liking (all your components are included).

    Add a tristate bridge and CFI-Flash to your SOPCBuilder system en regenerate your PTF file.

    It doens&#39;t matter that your board doesn&#39;t have CFI-Flash. Copy the PTF file to another directory were it&#39;s save and remove the cfi and tristate bridge.

    Regenerate your PTF file and continue working with Quartus to make the SOF-file you need.

    The PTF file you backed up containes the system your using plus a CFI-Flash. This PTF can be used for the hwselect script to compile your kernel. It doesn&#39;t matter that your system doesn&#39;t actually have a CFI &#39;cause the kernel only needs the info for some internal checking.

    Make sure the "fake" CFI doesn&#39;t overlap with any of your other components!

    If you made a change to your SOPCBuilder system you can always copy and paste the CFI component from your backed up PTF file to the new one to recompile your kernel.

    I hope this clarifies what Hippo already said.

    Greetz Walter Goossens
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
    Icon for Honored Contributor rankHonored Contributor
    19 years ago

    Yes, it did help. Thanks everyone.

    I did know that this was what I was supposed to do, but I was running into a problem with SOPC Builder 6.0. In this version, you can create "board descriptions," which specify all the hardware on the board.

    The problem then, is that once a board description is chosen, it won&#39;t allow you to add components that aren&#39;t physically on the board, such as a CFI! So, under SOPC Builder 6.0, the board description needs to be set to &#39;Unassigned&#39; to work well.

    So I have uCLinux up and running on a Cyclone II DSP dev board now.