Porting FreeBSD to the Neo1973 (arm920t)

[Marius Nuennerich]

On Tue, 18 Sep 2007 10:00:37 -0600 (MDT)
Warner Losh <imp at bsdimp.com> wrote:

> From: Marius Nuennerich <marius.nuennerich at gmx.de>
> Subject: Re: Porting FreeBSD to the Neo1973 (arm920t)
> Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2007 17:16:01 +0200
> 
> > On Tue, 18 Sep 2007 07:54:31 -0600 (MDT)
> > "M. Warner Losh" <imp at bsdimp.com> wrote:
> > 
> > > In message: <20070918115334.569521c1 at sol.hackerzberg.local>
> > >             Marius Nuennerich <marius.nuennerich at gmx.net> writes:
> > > : Hi all,
> > > : 
> > > : Andrew Turner and me are currently exploring what to do about getting
> > > : FreeBSD to run on the Neo1973. Andrew put up some first instructions
> > > : here: http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/FreeBSD
> > > : 
> > > : Much information about the hardware can be found in that wiki. We are
> > > : currently stuck after loading the kernel because there is no
> > > : framebuffer driver (yet) and the uart is not working.
> > > : 
> > > : I'm using qemu right now because I have no hardware yet.
> > > 
> > > Are there instructions for that posted somewhere.  Last time I tried
> > > to get it going I hit all kinds of snags.
> > 
> > Just checkout https://svn.openmoko.org/trunk/src/host/qemu-neo1973 with
> > subversion and do this:
> > http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Talk:OpenMoko_under_QEMU#FreeBSD_and_Qemu...
> > 
> > Then run openmoko/download.sh and openmoko/flash.sh if you have all the
> > dependencies it should work.
> 
> I'll take a look at these...  I think there might be some of this
> integrated into the qemu-devel port, but maybe I'm misremebering the
> commit messages.

I don't know anything about this.

> > > : Any idea what to do next? How to get the uart working? And how to tell
> > > : the kernel to use it as console?
> > > 
> > > Chances are very good that you'll need more than just the uart.  The
> > > uart for the samsung devices will need a driver written for it.
> > > You'll also need to initialize memory in some way that's unique for
> > > this SoC
> > 
> > Uh, I thought that this could happen. I have no experience with drivers
> > like this. But at least it's documented in the User Manual from
> > Samsung.
> 
> Yes.  There's also a console driver (but not serial port driver) in
> NetBSD right now for at least earlier versions of the Samsung part's
> uart.

Do you have a link for cvsweb for this driver? Do I understand it
correctly that, if integrated into FreeBSD, we could at least see the
kernel output?

> > > : Many Thanks
> > > : Marius
> > > : 
> > > : P.S. Should I have posted this to freebsd-arm?
> > > 
> > > This is radically cool!
> > > 
> > > I'd love to see FreeBSD going on this phone, and would help out as
> > > best I can.  I was going to buy one, but my cash flow won't allow it
> > > until I can sell some real estate :-(.
> > 
> > Hehe, similar problem here. I wait for the next hardware version as one
> > should be able to use gps without a linux blob.
> 
> Maybe I should wait for it as well :-)
> 
> btw, the project offers p4 services for people that are doing cool
> work.  This would qualify.  The arm-devel p4 branch has many items
> that are being polished for integration into the tree, and this seems
> like a good place to do the neo work.  I did all my atmel work on a p4
> branch...

So far there has not been much work on the FreeBSD kernel side but it's
a good idea for when a patch grows :)

Maybe there are other ideas what to try?

Afaik the only Options for communicating with a neo in qemu are:
1. uart serial emulation
2. usb CDC ACM http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/CDC_ACM but I haven't seen
   if this is emulated and I don't know if FreeBSD has a driver for
   this.
3. Framebuffer support, I don't have any idea what's the status of this
   in FreeBSD. AND there will be a major change in the next hardware
   version (use of another chip to gain hw-acceleration) so it's not
   necessary to invest much time in getting the current thing to work.


Kind regards
Marius