Re: single device to replace ADSL router, WiFi/Ethernet router, SIP router?
Guys:
On Thu, Dec 22, 2011 at 11:48 AM, Lennart Sorensen
<lsorense@csclub.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
> In terms of being unbrickable, I am very impressed by my i.MX53 quick
> start board. The bootloader is on microSD. Any actual board designed
> with it could have the boot loader on a SATA disk if desired. There is
> no boot rom at all in the design as far as I can tell.
I really, really hate this idea. :) I much prefer having a
bootloader in NAND, so that I'm not beholden to all the i/o necessary
to read it from somewhere more complicated and less controllable.
In addition, I really, really hate the quality levels I am seeing with
uSD/eMMC devices right now. I know they are all internally based on
NAND, why not ditch the little microcontroller they must also include
and talk to a NAND directly? One less part to break, and one less
thing to question the sanity of when you switch that device from FAT
(which it is almost certainly optimized for) and extN or equivalent.
(OT, but I wonder if the hangs and hiccups I see often enough to worry
about aren't in some way due to the microcontroller's assumptions
about the filesystem in use).
Finally, obviously what you are calling the "bootloader" in your board
is merely a second-stage one, as the CPU almost certainly does not
natively know how to read from uSD. A first-stage bootloader must
exist somewhere in the SoC itself. That doesn't really matter if you
are happy always reading from a presumed-functional uSD, but as a
platform integrator I would want to research what other options it
makes available--- especially ones that would allow me to have a
"factory reset button" on the unit that truly wipes the uSD and
initiates a fresh download of a kernel and rootfs over https from
somewhere.
Don't get me wrong, I like the Quick Start board too (I think I have
one on my desk somewhere, actually). But I don't like the temptation
to turn something like that into a product without a lot of additional
thought. I'm looking at you too, Beagleboard. :)
b.g.
--
Bill Gatliff
bgat@billgatliff.com
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