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Re: New to this list



Hi Kitts,

In addition to looking at the emdebian stuff, to get a feel for some of the stuff you're asking questions about, you might find it useful to look at

http://www.denx.de/wiki/DULG/Manual

The documentation there relates specifically to the TQM8xxL evaluation board, but since DENX is the home of u-boot, the whole site serves as a nice primer on embedded development. At the very least you'll learn some interesting stuff. I believe u-boot has a port to work on coldfire boards, too.

Good luck,

-Jim Heck

kitts wrote:
Hi All,

I am new to this list and am interested in knowing and working with embedded linux. I have not had any true ''embedded linux" experience yet although i have worked plenty with embedded systems. The closest i have come is running linux on x86 based SBC's following the standard PC architecture with CF card used as standard IDE drives.

I have been using Linux exclusively on my desktop for quite some time now. However, I am now going to begin my first truly embedded linux project for which i am seeking support. The hardware is a custom coldfire (with MMU) based board having small amount (up to 1MB) of NOR flash (bootstrap) for the bootloader and reasonably larger NAND flash which would contain the kernel, the root FS etc.

The first thing i need to know about is the design of the bootloader (colilo?). How does the kernel get loaded? does the bootloader decompress the kernel? I do recollect reading that the kernel decompresses itself? What is the address to which the kernel is to be loaded? It is not a multiboot compliant ELF image. Or is it?

The second and rather important part that i have little information about is MTD. How will these flash chips appear in the /dev folder? I mean; how are the chip recognized? how do they get mapped to /dev/mtd1 /dev/mtd2 etc?

I would greatly appreciate anyone who would either answer these or show me documentation where i can get the relevant information.



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