Re: Advice, papers, software for newbie ARM developer
+++ Liberty Young [04-02-13 12:59 -0700]:
> The company I currently work for is interested in breaking into the ARM
> market. We're just wondering if anybody out there as advice or
> recommendations for ARM software. One of the biggest hurdles we face
> that have previously kept us in the x86 market was the BIOS. There are
> those who tell me that Linux-arm has bootloaders, such as brog, that can
> allow one to quickly make a BIOS/Linux-bootloader within a few weeks!
> I'm dubious of such claims, and I was wondering what the people on this
> list use for their BIOS, and how long does it typically take to produce
> a working BIOS for their ARM products that can boot Linux.
There are plenty of arm bootloaders. I did a big review of them all a year
or two ago. Different bootloaders tend to be associated with different sets
of platforms, and some do everythings (and are fat), some do little (and are
small). Blob and bootldr are the two I've fiddled with - uboot is
increasingly popular.
I'm sure they are all less aggravation than PC BIOSes as they have a great
deal less ancient cruft in them :-)
Certainly getting it to work on new hardware in a week or two is often
perfectly reasonable.
See:
http://www.aleph1.co.uk/armlinux/docs/ARMbooting/t1.html
for a discussion of booting Linux on ARM, and 9 bootloaders.
Wookey
--
Aleph One Ltd, Bottisham, CAMBRIDGE, CB5 9BA, UK Tel +44 (0) 1223 811679
work: http://www.aleph1.co.uk/ play: http://www.chaos.org.uk/~wookey/
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