1500b7d5c8
Broadcom Northstar family of SoCs is most commonly used for home routers. It's an ARM platform with Cortex-A9 CPU(s). All known Northstar devices come with CFE bootloader which almost always expects a TRX firmware format (with exception for D-Link). Some vendors (like Luxul and Netgear) wrap TRX in their own containers. This board code provides: 1. Minimal kernel with support for on-SoC blocks. It enables Linux drivers for SoC, watchdog, Ethernet, switch, USB, PCIe, LEDs). 2. Post image script building firmware images. In uses Buildroot packages tools (lzma_alone, otrx, lxlfw) to build bootloader-compatible images that can be flashed. Signed-off-by: Rafał Miłecki <rafal@milecki.pl> Reviewed-by: Giulio Benetti <giulio.benetti@benettiengineering.com> Signed-off-by: Thomas Petazzoni <thomas.petazzoni@bootlin.com>
39 lines
1.2 KiB
Plaintext
39 lines
1.2 KiB
Plaintext
Broadcom Northstar
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Intro
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=====
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This readme covers Northstar family of Broadcom SoCs. It includes:
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- BCM4708 (2 x 800 MHz)
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- BCM47081 (1 x 800 MHz)
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- BCM4709 (2 x 1 GHz)
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- BCM47094 (2 x 1 GHz) (AKA BCM4709C0)
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Northstar platform is used in some home routers by multiple vendors. There are
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over 100 market devices based on it and they can all be supported with 1 kernel.
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There is no point in having separated board for each model. This board code is
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meant for all supported Northstar devices.
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All Northstar devices come with CFE bootloader by default. It's basically closed
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source as sources are available for some old releases only. There is no U-Boot (or
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any other) drop-in replacement or second stage loader with Northstar support.
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CFE supports flashing firmware images over TFTP and HTTP (depending on vendor /
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device setup).
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How to build it
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===============
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$ make broadcom_ns_defconfig
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$ make
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How to flash over HTTP
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======================
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Power on device and press (and hold) CTRL+C in serial console terminal. When CFE
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gets into prompt mode it'll automatically start built-in HTTP server. Navigate
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to http://192.168.1.1/ (unless IP was changed - verify with "ifconfig") and
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upload new firmware using a web browser.
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