To flash the board, you need to use the serial port.
The software you will need:
Warning: The darrell loader is working with gcc 3.4.5. We tried gcc 4.1 and it didn't work. We have to debug this issue. If you have problems, email us and we'll send you a binary.
When you compile the Darrell loader, you get a binary named loader.bin, the one you will upload.
The tricky part is the Darrel's loader. It's located in the ROM in the AT91RM9200 CPU. To have it loaded you need to perform the following steps:
- Load the Darrel's loader into RAM
- Power off the board
- Short the J2 jumper
- Start a XMODEM transfer. You might want to use minicom for this task.
- Power on the board before the transfer times out.
- Wait until the u-boot image loads
When it gets loaded, it prompts the menu endlessly, you can stop that by pressing a key (ENTER is a good choice).
- Remove the J2 jumper without restarting the board.
This allows the loader to store the Loader in the AT91's ROM.
- Using the menu of the Loader that is running, select the first option (1)
1: Upload loader to Dataflash with vector 6 modification. 2: Upload u-boot to Dataflash. 3: Upload Linux to Dataflash 4: Start U-boot 5: Upload Filesystem image 6: Memory test
This will ask for a XMODEM transfer, the same one that was done in a previous step. In minicom, you can use Ctrl + a + s to repeat the transfer.
Once the transfer finishes, the Darrel's loader will be stored in the AT91RM9200 ROM (TODO: Is it OK to call this memory a ROM?). So it will be there when you reboot, and you'll get a nifty menu that will allow you to:
There is another method that doesn't require a Jumper. It's not easy to describe. Perhaps we should automate it using expect, as we did a long time ago for the gumstix.
Last update: 2007-07-29 (Rev 392)