[split] U-Boot with NVMe support, keyboard & display working

[as400]

This was just posted by @sigmaris on IRC.

https://lists.denx.de/pipermail/u-boot/2...07894.html

And the patches (quite fresh):

http://people.hupstream.com/~rtp/pbp/20200706/patches/

[Arwen]

Actually, I'd put the builtin USB keyboard at a higher priority than the eDP.

With USB keyboard support, (builtin and or external), we can setup a sequence of events at boot:

• Pause & blink LED, (which one?), for a short time, (5 seconds?). Perhaps power LED, alternating red & green.
  
• During this time, accept keyboard input
  
• Select boot device of:
  
  1. USB
     
  2. MicroSD card
     
  3. NVMe
     
  4. eMMC
     

With this, we can leave an SD card installed, and over-ride booting to it.

Or even allow re-arranging the default boot order to be fastest first, since we can select something else if needed.

1. NVMe
   
2. eMMC
   
3. MicroSD card
   
4. USB
   

[as400]

I tried to build uboot with patches from @pcm720 + patches from Arnaud to enable eDP support in uboot.

I failed miserably. All the patches apply correctly (on top of 2020.07) and uboot builds ok but resulting SPI image does not boot. Probably something missing in config.

Unfortunately i'm away from home and don't have my serial cable with me

[as400]

OK, so I finally was able to build working (sort of) uboot with nvme boot, display and keyboard thanks to Arnaud and @samueldr work.

It boots my 5.8-rc5 but inconsistently. In 15 tries I have 5 failed boots.

If someone is brave enough to test it - I can share SPI image or images for SD/eMMC.

[belfastraven]

OK, so I finally was able to build working (sort of) uboot with nvme boot, display and keyboard thanks to Arnaud and @samueldr work.

It boots my 5.8-rc5 but inconsistently. In 15 tries I have 5 failed boots.

If someone is brave enough to test it - I can share SPI image or images for SD/eMMC.

I'd be happy to try the SPIFLASH build--I can always back it off and rewrite the working one.  I do have serial output enabled so I can probably help debug.  if you are still without your serial cable.   I would be using a standard Manjaro 5.7 kernel.  I think we are using the same brand/model of NVME  SBXe  except mine is only a 480G.

[Arwen]

@as400, Is there really any reason why it can't be on the eMMC for testing?

Even if testing, (and further modifications), takes months, putting on the eMMC is both easier to recover, (via the disable switch). And might actually be faster. Whence it's working with all the features we want, then put it in the SPI.

As for the display and keyboard support, wonderful.
Now can I get greedy and ask for a simple menu to select the boot device?
Then a timeout to boot the default order, (whatever that ends up being).

[as400]

EDIT 16.07.2020 - included images with menu

EDIT 29.07.2020 - new version posted on page 3


So if someone wants to test here are the images (there is NVME boot included in all of them):

REMOVED

Maybe we should move this discussion to another thread so we don't hijack this one ? @Arwen  ?

[Arwen]

@as400, Split done.

Notify other user, @belfastraven

On the main subject, I'll try and see if I have time over the next week to install and test.

[as400]

Great - testing needed.
Especially those random kernel lockups are annoying.

[Arwen]

@as400, oh, in my rush to learn forum post splitting, I forgot to say;

Thank you!