Make script doesn't generate Preloader image for DE0-Nano board

[ASoko19]

Hi, everyone.

I'm working on booting up Linux on DE0-Nano board.

I've successfully created a HPS design, got FPGA programming file and generated a bsp settings file.

But when I try to make the preloader image with make command it tells me to visit the rocketboards site:

Please visit https://rocketboards.org/foswiki/Documentation/BuildingBootloader for instructions on how to build the bootloader.

But on this site there is no information about how to compile preloader image, only the bootloader image.

So what should I do to get the preloader image?

BR,

Artem Sokolov

[Fawaz_Al-Jubori]

Hello.

This is the new flow of generating the bootloader for SoC FPGA devices starting from Quartus Prime 19.1.

This flow will generate the preloader and uboot together.

thanks

[ASoko19]

Hello.

Thanks for clarification. I created preloader image, burnt SD card with all necessary files, but I get nothing via UART in the terminal.

So I have a few more questions in order to make sure I did all the steps right:

1. As I understood bsp-editor needs u-boot.tar.gz file in order to make preloader. Is it right to just download altera u-boot git repo in tar.gz format and provide bsp-editor with this file?
2. I copied u-boot-spl.bin file to a2 partition as preloader image. Is it a right file to copy?
3. Are there any ways to make sure that preloader image is alright?

BR,

Artem Sokolov

[JFrye2]

You should abandon the idea of a separate preloader. It is now built into u-boot. You clone the altera-opensource/u-boot repo and point u-boot to the hardware-software handoff files and it will generate the preloader. The file you will be looking for after building u-boot is u-boot-with-spl.sfp. I am convinced there are bugs in their u-boot, but you should still be able to get the chip set up to run Linux. I suggest you take the time to read https://github.com/u-boot/u-boot/blob/master/doc/README.socfpga because it should clarify a lot of your confusion; it helped me a lot. I think you will want to use the socfpga_cyclone5_defconfig when building u-boot (that was the one I got to work; when I tried to use the one for my board, the DE1-SoC I got no console output which is kind of buggy). Clone the repo, point it to the Quartus project, configure it for socfpga_cyclone5_defconfig, and build. Put u-boot-with-spl.sfp on the A2 partition and you should be golden.