Linux on Motorola Sandpoint/PPMC7400

Hi,

I've seen that Hard Hat Linux supports the Sandpoint board with
MPC8240 and MPC755. We have a 7400 processor there though. Does anyone
have any experience with this configuration? Can Linux run on it?

Also, is there anything special I should know about booting Linux from
dink32? Here's what I did, and how it failed. I got the latest kernel
snapshot from fsmlabs (I tried the same with both the latest 2.2 and
2.3 trees). I set in the Makefile ARCH := ppc and CROSS_COMPILE :=
powerpc-linux- (the prefix for the tools that I have installed, on my
Debian box, from www.emdebian.org). "make menuconfig", there I made
sure I have support for serial console, there I also set the boot
command line (PReP command line it says) to "console=ttyS0,9600
console=ttyS0 root=/dev/ram" (I don't really have initrd yet, I want
to see the kernel booting first). Then make zImage, which compiles
fine, "file arch/ppc/boot/zvmlinux" tells me it's indeed a PowerPC ELF
image, then I zsrec it to an srec file (I tried all kinds of offsets
-- does it matter?), then I upload it to the PowerPC box, then I "go"
to that offset, and then it just hangs...

Any ideas what to try? I'm simply lost...

Thanks a lot in advance!


--
Alex Shnitman                            | http://www.debian.org
alexsh@hectic.net, alexsh@linux.org.il   +-----------------------
http://alexsh.hectic.net    UIN 188956    PGP key on web page
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Make it idiot-proof and someone will make a better idiot.
	-- Mikko Hänninen

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On Mon, 28 Aug 2000, Alex Shnitman wrote:

	Hi,

Also, is there anything special I should know about booting Linux from
dink32? Here's what I did, and how it failed. I got the latest kernel
snapshot from fsmlabs (I tried the same with both the latest 2.2 and
2.3 trees). I set in the Makefile ARCH := ppc and CROSS_COMPILE :=
powerpc-linux- (the prefix for the tools that I have installed, on my
Debian box, from www.emdebian.org). "make menuconfig", there I made
sure I have support for serial console, there I also set the boot
command line (PReP command line it says) to "console=ttyS0,9600
console=ttyS0 root=/dev/ram" (I don't really have initrd yet, I want
to see the kernel booting first). Then make zImage, which compiles
fine, "file arch/ppc/boot/zvmlinux" tells me it's indeed a PowerPC ELF
image, then I zsrec it to an srec file (I tried all kinds of offsets
-- does it matter?), then I upload it to the PowerPC box, then I "go"
to that offset, and then it just hangs...

You can't start an ELF image from jumping at it sload address. But I know
only PPCBUG and OF, not your firmware.

	Gabriel.


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Alex Shnitman wrote:

Hi,

I've seen that Hard Hat Linux supports the Sandpoint board with
MPC8240 and MPC755. We have a 7400 processor there though. Does anyone
have any experience with this configuration? Can Linux run on it?

Also, is there anything special I should know about booting Linux from
dink32? Here's what I did, and how it failed. I got the latest kernel
snapshot from fsmlabs (I tried the same with both the latest 2.2 and
2.3 trees).

Alex,

If you want to use Hard Hat Linux on the Sandpoint, you need to get it from
Monta Vista's CDK 1.2.  The LSP (Linux Support Package) you're looking for is
sp8240 (for Sanpoint 8240--also works with a 755/107 combo).  You can find it
online at ftp://ftp.mvista.com/pub/CDK/1.2/cd/PowerPC/ppc_82xx/RPMS/

You will probably need most of the rpms and so it will take a while (its based
on 2.4.0-test2).

The code in that LSP has not trickled up to fsmlabs so I'm not surprised what
you downloaded from there didn't work.

Nothing special for DINK except that you need to let it run until it puts its
prompt out (the kernel expects DINK to do some early initialization).

I haven't tested with a 7400 but it should be fairly close if it doesn't work
right out of the box.  That is, work without altivec.  I don't know what's
involved to use the altivec support in Linux.

Mark


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Alex Shnitman wrote:

I've seen that Hard Hat Linux supports the Sandpoint board with
MPC8240 and MPC755. We have a 7400 processor there though. Does anyone
have any experience with this configuration? Can Linux run on it?

While I have no experience with this board, I have run Linux on our
own boards, with MPC750, MPC755, and MPC7400. Note these three can
all be obtained in APPROXIMATELY pin-compatible packages, and their
architecthres are compatible (the 7400 adds AltiVec; I'm ignoring
differences in clock speed, cache size, etc). The MPC8240 is I believe
a completely different beast (I've never used one).

I used Linux Kernel 2.2.15 from YellowDog, heavily customized to run
on our boards. I made no MPC7400-specific changes, however. Note I
made no effort at all to optimize it for the 7400 (other than adding
the proper l2cr parameter -- yes, your software has to be aware of
the hardware platform's details (:-().

	I have only 1 board with 7400s, and we are modifying it to
	try and evaluate SMP architecture....


Tom Roberts	tjroberts@lucent.com

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