u-boot bootstrapping to custom board LS1046A

[JRRandall]

Greetings,

We are developing a custom board using the NXP LS1046A.  We have connected a 32MB QSPI device  3DFS256M04VS2801 from 3D-Plus to use connected up to the LS1046A controller QSPI_A.  Note that nothing in connected to QSPI_B.  In order to bootstrap a custom build of u-boot for our board, I was going to connect the CodeWarrior TAP to our JTAG header, and set the RCW to "boot from RAM" and use JTAG to load our u-boot image into RAM.  We do not have access to anything other than JTAG in order to start this process, i.e. no SDHC SD Card etc.  Just the JTAG and the QSPI as well as UART for console output.  Has anyone attempted this before (bootstrapping u-boot via JTAG) that can give any pointers on what works and what doesn't?  Does this sound like a reasonable approach to bringing up a custom board?

[ufedor · Accepted solution]

The mentioned approach was tested several years ago and described in the AN12081 - RAM Boot using CodeWarrior on LS1046ARDB.Please note that QorIQ SDK v2.0-1703 was used during the testing and bootloader initialization was based on PPA firmware which is not supported in the modern SDK (was replaced by TF-A).

Considering above, it is more straightforward to use CodeWarrior Flash Programmer to write firmware into the on-board SPI Flash. Refer to the CodeWarrior Development Studio for QorIQ LS series - ARM V8 ISA, Targeting Manual, 9.4 Board recovery in case of missing/corrupt RCW in IFC memory.