[OLPC-devel] olpcflash 0.1.0 Alpha

[Jim Gettys]

Richard,

This is wonderful news.

Thanks for your hard work!
                          Regards,
                             - Jim


On Tue, 2006-08-15 at 23:58 -0500, Richard Smith wrote:
> olpcflash now works.
> 
> I'm booting my board with Linuxbios from the SPI part.
> 
> If you are currently booting from a PLCC then please give this a try.
> The rest of you should probably wait a bit and see if I've changed
> professions to bricklaying.
> 
> One thing I noticed is that SPI boot is slower than the PLCC by just
> enough that I thought it had crashed after "Copying LinuxBIOS to RAM."
> 
> To compile:
> 
> gcc -O olpcflash.c -o olpcflash
> 
> or if you test it under the buildrom uClibc env then you will need to
> add the -static option
> 
> To use:
> 
> - Read.
> ./olpcflash -r filename
> 
> - Write (Write does an erase first)
> ./olpcflash -w filename
> 
> - Verify
> ./olpcflash -v filename
> 
> My testing/developement method was to compile it static and copy it to
> a USB key.
> Then using a serial console I boot under the buildrom env from PLCC,
> mount the USB key, and run the program.
> 
> A side note is that I build with my USB mass storage 'use_delay' set
> zero and that appears to be working fine for my massive sample set of
> 1 key.
> 
> What I claim to have tested and Works For Me:
> 
> - read
> - write
> - verify
> - erase
> 
> Know Issues:
> 
> - THERE ARE NO SAFEGUARDS!!!
> 
> nuff said.
> 
> - Its really slow.
> 
> Currently it takes a little over 11 minutes to program the part.  A
> large part of this is due to only doing a single byte each program
> cycle.
> The part can program up to 256 bytes each cycle so that may be the
> next feature to add.  According to the typical program time in the
> datasheet it will only drop to around 6 minutes though so it may not
> be worth it.
> 
> - Re-entry from KBC reset back into KBC run mode causes the board to reboot.
> 
> Need to ask EnE about this.  For now putting the KBC back into run
> mode after I finish the operation is disabled.  This will allow you to
> use verify and make sure it worked ok.  If you use a PS2 keyboard you
> are toast at this point.
> 
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-- 
Jim Gettys
One Laptop Per Child