Re: Yet another [cross] installer
On Wed, Mar 3, 2010 at 4:55 PM, Oliver Kiddle <okiddle@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> If ARM really think they can challenge Intel Atoms in the netbook market,
> then I think they need to address this because a significant number of
> people will care about being able to upgrade the OS or to choose between
> Android, WinCE, Ubuntu Netbook Remix or MeeGo.
>
> Most of these devices use u-boot (or RedBoot) and as these are
> open source, perhaps it would be wise to make them (in their default
> configuration) do things to make life easy for us. As far as I can tell
ARM does not have control over what their licensees choose to do with
the IP block - the main CPU core. it is entirely up to the licensee,
in creating the plethora of actual ARM processors, to make the
decision on how to "boot". up until the Samsung S3C6410 and the
S5PC100 i had never heard of any licensee doing anything other than
"start executing stuff at fixed well-known documented memory address".
in the case of these two advanced samsung processors, they made the
decision, based on a *hardware* pin pulled high/low, to actually load
data for execution _direct_ off of an SD card. that implies that they
wrote some ROM instructions which are executed if the pin is high/low,
really quite sophisticated... but definitely non-standard.
the bottom line is that the chances of standardisation being reached
are... er... nil, and it is up to free software developers to adapt
accordingly, and _make_ things standard. manufacturers don't give a
stuff, they just wanna sell shit, cheap, by the millions.
l.
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