u-boot on the nios2 eval baord

Hi fmcmurra,

> none of them appear to be enabling the CFI flash driver (CFG_FLASH_CFI_DRIVER)

> is this correct?

Correct -- depending on the polling mechanism, there are some issues.

> The flash chips on my eval board are CFI compliant so I'm going to use that

> instead of flash.c. Are there any problems with this CFI driver.

The CFI driver doesn't have an problems per se, but depending on your

geometry, the avalon bus and the CFI driver don't always "play well" together.

See: http://forum.niosforum.com/forum/index.php...wtopic=2302&hl= (http://forum.niosforum.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=2302&hl=)

> The one in the regular u-boot tree works just fine so I'm hoping this one does too.

See the reference above. Also ...

The sources from psyent are from the "regular" u-boot tree -- in fact, the sources

from pysent are identical with the following exceptions:

- the pysent tree has patches applied to support Nios-II. Each and every one of the

patches have been submitted to the u-boot project. However, they have not been

applied to the main source tree yet. Wolfgang has unfortunately been _very_ slow

in applying them -- they were submitted in August and are still waiting (Arrgghh!).

- the psyent tree contains some "nips 'n tucks" to eliminate compile time warnings

and to account for compatibility issues in a cygwin environment (since that is the

most common for Nios-II developers). However, the structure and flow of the code

remains identical.

- the psyent tree has code for other processor architectures removed. This was

done only to reduce the download size.

- the psyent tree is synchronized with the main project infrequently. If I don't hear

any complaints, my motivation is limited ;-)

> Which board should I use for my port? Should I use one of the bords in the

> psyent or the altera board directory.

Probably the altera board directory is best -- perhaps the 1c20.

> I'm an old hand at Linux and u-boot (started when it was ppcboot) but I'm new

> to the FPGA's.

That makes you are a sight for sore eyes! ;-) I'm an old ppcboot person myself --

did the original 440GP port (1st book E ... on Ebony) and a variety of board ports

before moving to Nios-32 and Nios-II. I'm glad you're participating on this

forum -- I'll be glad to share whatever I have -- just shoot me a PM with any

specifics.

> Should I be using the offsets that are in the system.h file that's located in my

> project softaware subdirectory?

Yes ... use whatever the base addresses are from your hardware design.

Best Regards,

--Scott

BTW: I would encourage anyone interested in u-boot for Nios-II to apply some

pressure to the main u-boot project (via the mailing lists) -- patches should take

no longer than a few months to be applied (given the limited scope/size of the

project).