[ECOS] Can not get redboot to load / run linux binaries on IXP420

["Don Osburn" <don dot osburn at iscointl dot com>]

Mark,

Thanks again for the help so far.  I am really stumped.  I can not get
redboot to load / run linux on our platform.  I have tried a number of
things with no luck.  Can you or someone help out (please)?

Here's my config;  I am using Redboot v2.01.  Our platform is an IXP420 with
32MB RAM.

I originally used the redboot_ROM.bin image from the npe_enable_bin/ixdp425
directory to boot our platform.  It booted properly (even though we only
have 32MB of RAM).  I then attempted a

>load -r -v -b 0x01600000 zImage
which worked fine.  Then I attempted a
>load -r -v -b 0x00800000 ramdisk.gz
which would hang up every time.  It appeared like the problem was that the
load was writing to RAM being used by redboot, and that was causing it to
hang.

Since I knew we had a different memory config, I rebuilt redboot, modifying
the ixdp425.h file's SDRAM configs.  Specifically, I changed the following
#defines;

#define SDRAM_SIZE                         0x2000000  // 32MB
#define IXP425_SDRAM_CONFIG_INIT  (SDRAM_CONFIG_CAS_3 |
SDRAM_CONFIG_4x16Mx16)

I used the SDRAM_CONFIG_4x16Mx16 because we determined from chapter 7 of the
developer's manual that we needed to set the SDRAM config register to 0x11.
The rebuild worked, and I was able to update the redboot image successfully.

Unfortunately, when I attempted to load the linux images, I got the exact
same result as before.  zImage would load fine, but ramdisk.gz would hang
loading it at 0x00800000.

At this point, I decided to try something different.  The ramdisk.gz image
will load if I put it somewhere else.  Therefore, I did the following:

>load -r -v -b 0x01600000 zImage
>fis create -b 0x01600000 -l 0xc0000 -e 0x00800000 -r 0x01600000 zimage
>load -r -v -b 0x1000000 ramdisk.gz
>fis create -b 0x1000000 -l 0x2e0000 -e 0x00800000 -r 0x1000000 ramdisk
>fis load zimage
>fis load ramdisk
>exec -b 0x01600000

This time the kernel started to boot, but then it failed stating it could
not find a ramdisk at location 0.  Given that, I reloaded the images and
this time did a
>exec -b 0x01600000 -l 0x2e0000 -r 0x100000 -x 0x2e0000
and received the exact same results.  The kernel started, then died when it
could not find a ramdisk a location 0.

There is one last thing we attempted.  We found a note in a mini-howto
document that said for Redboot version 2.01, you are supposed to use
0x11600000 and 0x10800000 instead of 0x01600000 and 0x00800000 respectively.
I attempted the load using these values and got similar results.  (It would
hang during the load.)

At this point I am totally stumped.  How am I supposed to load the zImage
and ramdisk.gz images into my IXP420 board?  How do I get linux up and
running on this board using Redboot?

Help would be greatly appreciated.  This is grinding our project to a halt.

TIA,
Don


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