Re: [ECOS] Modifying RedBoot to support multiple flash devices

["Grant Mills" <gmills@ucsd.edu>]

On 3/10/06, Alex Schuilenburg <alexs@ecoscentric.com> wrote:
> yh@bizmail.com.au wrote:
> > Hello Alex,
> >
> > I am looking for redboot to support Intel P3 and I took the snapshot, but
> > seems that the intel/stratav2 is empty. Where can I find the source code
> > for supporting P3?
>
> As Andrew said, the intel/stratav2 directory is the flash_v2 branch. My
> bad as I did not realise we were not generating snapshots of the
> flash_v2 branch (now added to the cron to generate future snapshots for
> flash_v2 until the merge).
>
> To kickstart, I have also just generated a flash_v2 snapshot but it
> looks like you may have lucked out with P3 support.
>
> -- Alex
>
>
>
> --
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> and search the list archive: http://ecos.sourceware.org/ml/ecos-discuss
>
>
There is not a lot to supporting the P30 Flash Family from Intel. 
From my perspective there are three main hurdles:

1.  The entire chip is locked at reset.  This means that the
implementation will need to check for lock before any write/erase
operation.  This may already be in place.

2.  When supporting 512Mb and greater, the flash chip itself contains
multiple dies.  Each die is a 256Mb P30.  Therefore, you'll need to
track them as independent devices (at least I would.)

3.  Lastly, the 1Gb version has two chip selects.  This is more of a
hardware issue than a firmware but worth mentioning.

As I will be looking at the flash_v2 branch here soon, I'll see if I
can get some P30 support in before my own deadlines.  If not, I'll
table it til afterwards.

--
Grant Mills
gmills@ucsd.edu

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