Running uCLinux on Blackfin - custom board

First, Hello to all members!
I'm very new in DSPs and embedded devices, but I have a little
experience with microcontrolers in school and lots of Linux
experience.
I've met with a team that develops their own hardware (these boys have
worked with DSPs) and they want to make their own board with Blackfin
BF532 DSP. I have downloaded uCLinux along with blacfin-toolchain, u-
boot and some other tools. I have read tons of documentation and
_still_ something is unclear :)
uCLinux supports a list of processors and boards. BF532 is there, but
what is the situation with our custom board? Will be required to
rewrite parts of uCLinux or I could use the current  public release?

Thanks!

On 24 Mrz., 21:04, ivanat...@gmail.com wrote:
> First, Hello to all members!
> I'm very new in DSPs and embedded devices, but I have a little
> experience with microcontrolers in school and lots of Linux
> experience.
> I've met with a team that develops their own hardware (these boys have
> worked with DSPs) and they want to make their own board with Blackfin
> BF532 DSP. I have downloaded uCLinux along with blacfin-toolchain, u-
> boot and some other tools. I have read tons of documentation and
> _still_ something is unclear :)
> uCLinux supports a list of processors and boards. BF532 is there, but
> what is the situation with our custom board? Will be required to
> rewrite parts of uCLinux or I could use the current  public release?

You might try asking at ucdot.org. Include more details on your custom
hardware and the expected functionality of the software (people can't
read minds).

Regards,
Andor

> You might try asking at ucdot.org. Include more details on your custom
> hardware and the expected functionality of the software (people can't
> read minds).
I will try there, too.
I will try to explain what is to be on the board despite the hardware
developers are unclear in this way. They want to make universal board
for realtime online signal processing. There would be USB, RS232,
Compact Flash for Linux filesystem (PATA interface), at least 32M
SDRAM, ADSP-BF532, maybe another ARM CPU for the booting process (I
don't know how ARM helps there?), later may be added boot  ROM, some
PHY interface to LAN, FPGA for TCP/IP stuff, another FGPA for input
buffer.
Is that similar to the EZKIT board? Could I hope the uClinux would run
on our hardware with configuration of EZKIT?

ivanatora@gmail.com wrote:

> First, Hello to all members!
> I'm very new in DSPs and embedded devices, but I have a little
> experience with microcontrolers in school and lots of Linux
> experience.
> I've met with a team that develops their own hardware (these boys have
> worked with DSPs) and they want to make their own board with Blackfin
> BF532 DSP. I have downloaded uCLinux along with blacfin-toolchain, u-
> boot and some other tools. I have read tons of documentation and
> _still_ something is unclear :)
> uCLinux supports a list of processors and boards. BF532 is there, but
> what is the situation with our custom board? Will be required to
> rewrite parts of uCLinux or I could use the current  public release?

You might need to write a driver for this board, if it contains components
which have no driver.

bye
Andreas
-- 
Andreas H�nnebeck | email: acmh@gmx.de
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As long as you have enough SDRAM to work with, ucLinux will run on 
almost any Blackfin based board you can construct.

Go on http://blackfin.uclinux.org and read up on the BF533-STAMP board 
and its various add-on boards. If you more or less clone their hardware, 
using the same ethernet/USB/etc controller chips, making these 
peripherals work should be straightforward.

I doubt you'll need the ARM. the BF531/2/3 series parts don't really 
need help booting up, they're happy loading code from parallel or SPI 
flash by themselves.

GM

ivanatora@gmail.com wrote:
>> You might try asking at ucdot.org. Include more details on your custom
>> hardware and the expected functionality of the software (people can't
>> read minds).
> I will try there, too.
> I will try to explain what is to be on the board despite the hardware
> developers are unclear in this way. They want to make universal board
> for realtime online signal processing. There would be USB, RS232,
> Compact Flash for Linux filesystem (PATA interface), at least 32M
> SDRAM, ADSP-BF532, maybe another ARM CPU for the booting process (I
> don't know how ARM helps there?), later may be added boot  ROM, some
> PHY interface to LAN, FPGA for TCP/IP stuff, another FGPA for input
> buffer.
> Is that similar to the EZKIT board? Could I hope the uClinux would run
> on our hardware with configuration of EZKIT?
> 

Gary Marsh wrote:
> As long as you have enough SDRAM to work with, ucLinux will run on
> almost any Blackfin based board you can construct.
>
> Go on http://blackfin.uclinux.org and read up on the BF533-STAMP board
> and its various add-on boards. If you more or less clone their hardware,
> using the same ethernet/USB/etc controller chips, making these
> peripherals work should be straightforward.
>
> I doubt you'll need the ARM. the BF531/2/3 series parts don't really
> need help booting up, they're happy loading code from parallel or SPI
> flash by themselves.
>
> GM
>

Ah, thank you! This was most reliefing to hear.