Hackberry A10 Bootloader

Having been intrigued by the boot messages that appear upon the board booting I thought I would take some time to look at this further. As described on numerous internet sites the A10 first loads the bootloader boot0 to do some basic initialisation and then loads the secondary bootloader boot1. It seems boot1 can do many things like display a logo or load a linux kernel. In our case boot1 seems be contained in the file boot.axf. So here is the output from this board.

HELLO! BOOT0 is starting!
boot0 version : .3.0
dram size =1024
Succeed in opening nand flash.
Succeed in reading Boot1 file head.
The size of Boot1 is 0x00036000.
The file stored in 0X00000000 of block 2 is perfect.
Check is correct.
Ready to disable icache.
Succeed in loading Boot1.
Jump to Boot1.
[       0.146] boot1 version : 1.3.1a
[       0.146] pmu type = 3
[       0.146] bat vol = 0
[       0.177] axi:ahb:apb=3:2:2
[       0.177] set dcdc2=1400, clock=1008 successed
[       0.179] key
[       0.191] no key found
[       0.191] flash init start
[       1.570] flash init finish
[       1.571] fs init ok
[       1.572] fattype FAT16
[       1.572] fs mount ok
[       1.578] script finish
[       1.580] power finish
[       1.584] BootMain start
[       1.584] 0
[       1.593] usbdc_vol = 4000, usbdc_cur = 0
[       1.593] usbpc_vol = 4000, usbpc_cur = 0
[       1.595] init to usb pc
[       1.598] set pc
[       1.601] key value = 0
[       1.603] recovery key high 6, low 4
[       1.607] unable to find fastboot_key key_max value
[       1.613] test for multi os boot with display
[       1.616] show pic finish
[       1.619] load kernel start
[       1.639] load kernel successed
[       1.639] start address = 0x4a000000
[       1.641] power exit detect
[       1.644] usb exit d


As we can see boot0 loads and initialises the SDRAM Ram and then jumps to Boot1. Boot1 checks to see if the FEL Recovery button is pressed by the following

[       0.179] key
[       0.191] no key found

While continuing the remaining steps in boot1 until  [       1.584] 0  it also waits for key input from the serial port. In fact the '0' is the ASCII key value it detected, in this case zero (no key pressed).  So what happens if we hold a key pressed while the board is booting?

If we keep key '1' pressed while the board is booting we get this

Jump to Boot1.

[       0.146] boot1 version : 1.3.1a

[       0.146] pmu type = 3

[       0.146] bat vol = 0

[       0.177] axi:ahb:apb=3:2:2

[       0.177] set dcdc2=1400, clock=1008 successed

[       0.178] key

[       0.191] no key found

[       0.191] flash init start

[       1.568] flash init finish

[       1.569] fs init ok

[       1.570] fattype FAT16

[       1.570] fs mount ok

[       1.576] script finish

[       1.577] power finish

[       1.582] BootMain start

[       1.582] 49

[       1.582] part count = 2

[       1.585] USB Device!!

[       1.588] USB Connect!!

[       1.643] uSuspend

If we now connect the lower usb port to a PC we get this

[     188.626] uSuspend

[     188.701] uSuspend

[     188.768] usb_device: Set Address 0x0x00000006

[     189.788] usb_device: Get MaxLUN

And for this board 2 usb drives should appear in Windows/Linux showing the boot nand partition and I think the Android data partition. In fact it will shown every FAT partition it can recognise from the NAND  chip. I was hoping that it would also show FAT partitions for the SD card/USB drive but it doesn't seem to be the case. This feature is used to facilitate the coping of files to the boot partition while developing the bootloader code without having to re-flash the whole chip. For me this is an alternative way to get to the boot partition files or to copy files from another FAT partition. To get out of this mode press the FEL recovery button and the board reboots.

If we try key '2' we get this

[       0.221] BootMain start

[       0.221] 50

[       0.222] Jump to fel

The boot1 jumps to FEL recovery mode to be used with Livesuite.

If we try key '3' we get this

[       0.221] BootMain start

[       0.221] 51

[       0.222] welcome to key value test

[       0.225] press any key, and the value would be printed

[       0.231] press power key to exit

Seems to be some kind of test mode for detecting button presses in our case we have just one button the  FEL recovery button to test.

 

[      47.254] key value = 15

[      47.257] key value = 63

Unfortunately none of the other numerical keys seems to have any effect while boot1 is booting.

 

Hackberry A10 First attempt to boot Ubuntu 12.04 & Puppy Linux

After a couple of hours of debugging I final got the MK802 Ubuntu 12.04 image working on the Hackberry. So thanks to guys on the miniand forums for create the images, in the end just a simple tweak of deploying the script.bin from the pre-installed Android got the image to boot. Once booted and after log-on I manually enabled the Ethernet connectivity.

As this is a pre-built image the wifi wasn't detected correctly, however I was pleased to make such quick progress. The build seems to be fairly snappy and its good to see it reporting the full 1GB memory. Of course further work is required to get a fully functioning build.

I also spent some time getting the pre built version of Puppy Linux  to boot based on this article on liliputing. Again faced similar issues to the Ubuntu build but got there in the end! As mentioned in the liliputing article the user interface is not as slick as Ubuntu but I can see a certain attraction to Puppy because of its speed. The main draw with this pre-built image is that its only reporting 512Mb RAM.

Hackberry A10 update 1

Hackberry A10 available to buy from here . 

For the last few weeks I've been very busy mainly due to the interest in the board and more importantly debugging the hardware/software to determine what some of the missing connectors and solder points are for. Unfortunately one of the boards wasn't reporting the 1GB RAM and has to be sent back, so I'm only left with one board.

Well here's the progress so far, the serial port is located on the right above the power socket and hopefully the boards can be manufactured with the connector in place. I located two missing connector points for switches either side of the infra-red dectector. One turned out to be for a power down/up or sleep mode. The other is to force the board on boot up into FEL mode, having almost bricked my board a number times I was more than happy to find this. So now the board can easily be reflashed using Livesuit which I can confirm works. Next to the FEL recovery switch solder points are what look like solder points for a USB connector, unfortunately I haven't had time to test out if its active or not or whether the wifi board is using the USB port. Another plus point for the board is that most of the solder points easily accessible for soldering. Theres also some interesting connection points on the back of the pcb which I haven't explored yet!

The "Boot1" seems to be interesting as the USB ports are activated within "Boot1" as shown below,  I have a feeling that it should be possible to boot from the USB as well from SD card. When I can get sometime I will investigate this further as I think development must be done with the board some how connected to a PC instead of wearing the internal Flash away. Hopefully more news to follow.

HELLO! BOOT0 is starting!
boot0 version : .3.0
dram size =1024
Succeed in opening nand flash.
Succeed in reading Boot1 file head.
The size of Boot1 is 0x00036000.
The file stored in 0X00000000 of block 2 is perfect.
Check is correct.
Ready to disable icache.
Succeed in loading Boot1.
Jump to Boot1.
[       0.146] boot1 version : 1.3.1a
[       0.146] pmu type = 3
[       0.146] bat vol = 0
[       0.177] axi:ahb:apb=3:2:2
[       0.177] set dcdc2=1400, clock=1008 successed
[       0.179] key
[       0.191] no key found
[       0.191] flash init start
[       1.570] flash init finish
[       1.571] fs init ok
[       1.572] fattype FAT16
[       1.572] fs mount ok
[       1.578] script finish
[       1.580] power finish
[       1.584] BootMain start
[       1.584] 0
[       1.593] usbdc_vol = 4000, usbdc_cur = 0
[       1.593] usbpc_vol = 4000, usbpc_cur = 0
[       1.595] init to usb pc
[       1.598] set pc
[       1.601] key value = 0
[       1.603] recovery key high 6, low 4
[       1.607] unable to find fastboot_key key_max value
[       1.613] test for multi os boot with display
[       1.616] show pic finish
[       1.619] load kernel start
[       1.639] load kernel successed
[       1.639] start address = 0x4a000000
[       1.641] power exit detect
[       1.644] usb exit d