Is it possible to boot from compact flash?

Altera_Forum · ‎06-27-2006

We'll be sending a design to a customer soon and we'd like to be able to send them updates on compact flash cards. I'd been thinking that the board could boot off compact flash the same way as the onboard flash, but I can't find any way to do that.

Is there a way to boot directly from a CF card, or do I need to write a piece of code that copies data from the CF card to the area of onboard flash that the design can be programmed to boot from?

Altera_Forum · ‎06-27-2006

Hi bkucera,

You could use u-boot to load your application image from the CF card. U-boot supports a variety

of filesystems -- including FAT. This would allow you to essentially drag 'n drop on the development

environment side.

Regards,

--Scott

Altera_Forum · ‎06-27-2006

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originally posted by smcnutt@Jun 27 2006, 12:23 PM

hi bkucera,

you could use u-boot to load your application image from the cf card. u-boot supports a variety

of filesystems -- including fat. this would allow you to essentially drag 'n drop on the development

environment side.

regards,

--scott

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--- quote end ---

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Thanks for the fast response. Can u-boot handle hardware as well as software updates? With the flash programmer you can write an SOF file as well as your software into flash.

Also is there any issue with multiprocessor designs? Right now my design is dual processor, with one cpu running code under the uC-OS and the other running a standalone program.

One more question: Is the idea of copying SOF/program data from the CF card to the onboard flash valid? At this point that seems like the easiest way to go, at the expense of the flexibility that u-boot provides.

Altera_Forum · ‎06-29-2006

Hi bkucera,

> Can u-boot handle hardware as well as software updates? With the flash programmer you can

> write an SOF file as well as your software into flash.

Yes, provided you can download the correct binary images. U-boot can read/erase/write the

epcs device -- so if you tftp the binary image into main memory for example, u-boot can

write it to the epcs device. Creating the appropriate binary image(s) is usually where people

have trouble -- copying to the epcs device is the easy part ;-)

> Also is there any issue with multiprocessor designs?

I've never tried u-boot in a multiprocessor environment. But I don't think there would be any problems.

Just run u-boot on one of the cores (with access to the required peripherals: timer/uart).

> Is the idea of copying SOF/program data from the CF card to the onboard flash valid?

I've been assuming that you're referring to a serial configuration device -- regardless, u-boot can

parallel flash as well as the epcs.

Regards,

--Scott