Subject: kernel for custom MV64341 board?

From: Fredrik <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2005 17:55:50 -0800

Howdy,

I'm getting a custom board going: it sports an RM7000 and Marvell
MV64341 system controller (alas, no external UART!).  I've hacked
U-Boot to the point where I can TFTP a kernel image and (start to)
boot it.

So far I've been using an old 2.4 kernel I used for some Ocelot-G
work, just to get past the TFTP-load stage. MY QUESTION IS: What would
be the best kernel version for me to now start customizing for my
board?  Is 2.6 too bleeding-edge, 2.4 too moldy, or what?  Dealing
with the MV64341 will be most of the effort, of course.

The Ocelot boards seem well supported, but there looks to be a lot of
code that would have to change (different system controller, different
memory map--though I'm flexible--a lot of assumptions about the
goodies available on-board, etc.).  This is the first time I'll be
porting the kernel, so it might be more productive for me to start
from a minimalist configuration and add-in what I need.  Enough code
to set up the memory configuration would be a big help.

Suggestions?

/Fredrik

+----------------------------------------------------------------+
|            Fredrik Noon,   Senior Software Engineer            |
|            Hifn, Inc.      www.hifn.com                        |
|            [email-masked]  +1 408 399 3630                     |
|-------------------+--------------------------------------------|
|  pgp key: <http://noon.org/keys/pgpkey.txt> 7840AC55           |
+----------------------------------------------------------------+

---

From: Thomas Petazzoni <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2005 09:57:57 +0100

Hello,

> with the MV64341 will be most of the effort, of course.

I have recently hacked a 2.6 Linux-MIPS kernel for a custom RM9000 / 
MV64340 board, and it worked pretty well.

For the MV64340 UART, you can find a driver in the Bitkeeper PowerPC 
tree available at Montavista. Otherwise, I have written an other driver, 
much smaller, but maybe less functionnal than the one available from 
Montavista.

> to set up the memory configuration would be a big help.

Have a look at Linux-MIPS Wiki (http://www.linux-mips.org) it contains 
an updated version of the MIPS porting guide from Jun Sun. It's a very 
good starting point in my opinion.

Thomas
-- 
PETAZZONI Thomas - [email-masked]
http://thomas.enix.org - Jabber: [email-masked]
http://kos.enix.org, http://sos.enix.org
Fingerprint : 0BE1 4CF3 CEA4 AC9D CC6E  1624 F653 CB30 98D3 F7A7