Amigabill Projects

Das U-Boot for AmigaOne

A project I have tried to have time to work on for a while is to get the Das U-Boot (I wrongly call it uboot for short) firmware updated for AmigaOne motherboards from Eyetech, including XE and MicroA1, perhaps also the early SE version. There are two primary goals. The first is to get AmigaOne boards up to date, clear up some bugs, get PCI device scanning working better, etc. The second is to get cleaned up, compiling, and back into Denx's mainline uboot source tree, if they will allow it. (They deleted AmigaOneG3SE a while ago since it hadn't even compiled for them in a long long time)


Some time ago we obtained uboot 1.1.4 sources from those who ported it to the AmigaOne platform (though what is publically and officially released is 1.1.1 which I do not think we got sources for. As our goal is to get as modern as we can, I don't care which, only that we can work with some valid AmigaOne sources to get where we want to go), and more recently got sources for a somewhat more recent 1.2.0 version which was never officially released. The 1.1.4 version does not compile using Denx's ELDK environment, and my own AmigaOneXE board is too buried in storage to try compiling on that with Hyperion's SDK. But 1.2.0 did seem to compile, so we have a starting point.


I now plan to learn my way around the uboot sbc8641d board, as that should use the same ppc-74xx part of ELDK environment and does at first glance seem to use the BIOS emulator, and start figuring out how to add AmigaOne back into the modern uboot source tree again. The Scitech x86 BIOS emulation is still there, but has moved around. AmigaOneG3SE board has been removed, so that all needs merged back into the current Denx source tree for uboot.


Geri has made a cool uboot flash chip PCB to allow switching between original "good" uboot 1.1.1, and a second flash chip with our experimental testing stuff in it.

We'll only be able to test with Linux for some time, as the Amiga OS4 special sauce is not included in the open-source uboot, it's a proprietary chunk of software added later, and we the public can't do that ourselves. Once we have something working well, we will then present to Hyperion for consideration to add OS4 sauce for testing and then release. I need to learn how to get Linux installed to my AmigaOne for that part of things. Anyone up for a howto?



When will I have much time for this or any other project? Not sure, but I should at least start working on how to go about it.

Labels: uboot u-boot amigaone amiga

posted by Bill Toner @ 12:07 PM