Buildroot support for the PineCube
#1
Hello all,

at Elimo Engineering we have designed Impetus, a SoM that shares the Allwinner S3 SoC with the PineCube. Our first supported platform is (going to be) Buildroot.

Given the similarities of the two, and the general lack of support for the S3, we have decided to do double purpose and integrate support for the PineCube into Buildroot.

You can find the repo on our GitHub account and build instructions in the board support directory readme.

The most important thing that this provides is support for the S3's DDR3 in u-boot. Unfortunately mainline u-boot does not have that yet.

Since we don't have a PineCube ourselves, this is unfortunately untested, but it should get a functional system that boots to a console on UART0. It's pretty fast too, getting there in 1.5 seconds from u-boot to login prompt.

All in all, I think this could be a good starting point for further development.
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#2
(10-23-2020, 10:02 AM)matteo.scordino Wrote: Hello all,

at Elimo Engineering we have designed Impetus, a SoM that shares the Allwinner S3 SoC with the PineCube. Our first supported platform is (going to be) Buildroot.

Given the similarities of the two, and the general lack of support for the S3, we have decided to do double purpose and integrate support for the PineCube into Buildroot.

You can find the repo on our GitHub account and build instructions in the board support directory readme.

The most important thing that this provides is support for the S3's DDR3 in u-boot. Unfortunately mainline u-boot does not have that yet.

Since we don't have a PineCube ourselves, this is unfortunately untested, but it should get a functional system that boots to a console on UART0. It's pretty fast too, getting there in 1.5 seconds from u-boot to login prompt.

All in all, I think this could be a good starting point for further development.

Appreciated and thanks on the collaboration. I have PM you on your shipping info and I will ship one PineCube to you.

... TL
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#3
(10-23-2020, 10:02 AM)Hi matteo.scordino, Wrote: Since we don't have a PineCube ourselves, this is unfortunately untested, but it should get a functional system that boots to a console on UART0. It's pretty fast too, getting there in 1.5 seconds from u-boot to login prompt.

All in all, I think this could be a good starting point for further development.

I am unable to boot PineCube with instructions provided on this page -

https://github.com/elimo-engineering/bui...4/pinecube

I think the sdcard.img does not have uboot binaries and so if we burn it on SDCARD , bootloader partitions are not created.

Thus when I use the SDCARD with sdcard.img , I see no logs on serial UART0 console.


I have flashed NIXOS image to verify that my serial console setup works and I see logs and linux booting.


Could you let me know what I am missing here ?
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#4
(11-18-2020, 06:26 AM)disdi Wrote: I am unable to boot PineCube with instructions provided on this page -
...

I have flashed NIXOS image to verify that my serial console setup works and I see logs and linux booting.

Could you let me know what I am missing here ?
Hi there

I've been able to build and boot this demo for my Pinecube.

Any chance that you have UART0 and UART2 confused?  
The NixOS build uses UART2 as the console.  
This Buildroot image will use the other port, UART0, for the console.

Regards
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#5
What baud rate are the serial outputs?
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#6
Hi, I have tried the PinrCube branch of your Buildroot repo.

Unfortunately I get cyclic timeouts: 'sunxi-mmc 1c10000.mmc: fatal err update clk timeout'

Furthermore some functionality is not working. For example Ethernet.

Do you have any clue where the problem could be or how I can fix it?
  Reply


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