|
@@ -0,0 +1,54 @@
|
|
|
+Allwinner NAND flashing
|
|
|
+=======================
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+A lot of Allwinner devices, especially the older ones (pre-H3 era),
|
|
|
+comes with a NAND. NANDs storages are a pretty weak choice when it
|
|
|
+comes to the reliability, and it comes with a number of flaws like
|
|
|
+read and write disturbs, data retention issues, bloks becoming
|
|
|
+unusable, etc.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+In order to mitigate that, various strategies have been found to be
|
|
|
+able to recover from those issues like ECC, hardware randomization,
|
|
|
+and of course, redundancy for the critical parts.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+This is obviously something that we will take into account when
|
|
|
+creating our images. However, the BROM will use a quite weird pattern
|
|
|
+when accessing the NAND, and will access only at most 4kB per page,
|
|
|
+which means that we also have to split that binary accross several
|
|
|
+pages.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+In order to accomodate that, we create a tool that will generate an
|
|
|
+SPL image that is ready to be programmed directly embedding the ECCs,
|
|
|
+randomized, and with the necessary bits needed to reduce the number of
|
|
|
+bitflips. The U-Boot build system, when configured for the NAND will
|
|
|
+also generate the image sunxi-spl-with-ecc.bin that will have been
|
|
|
+generated by that tool.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+In order to flash your U-Boot image onto a board, assuming that the
|
|
|
+board is in FEL mode, you'll need the sunxi-tools that you can find at
|
|
|
+this repository: https://github.com/linux-sunxi/sunxi-tools
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+Then, you'll need to first load an SPL to initialise the RAM:
|
|
|
+sunxi-fel spl spl/sunxi-spl.bin
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+Load the binaries we'll flash into RAM:
|
|
|
+sunxi-fel write 0x4a000000 u-boot-dtb.bin
|
|
|
+sunxi-fel write 0x43000000 spl/sunxi-spl-with-ecc.bin
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+And execute U-Boot
|
|
|
+sunxi-fel exe 0x4a000000
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+On your board, you'll now have all the needed binaries into RAM, so
|
|
|
+you only need to erase the NAND...
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+nand erase.chip
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+Then write the SPL and its backup:
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+nand write.raw.noverify 0x43000000 0 40
|
|
|
+nand write.raw.noverify 0x43000000 0x400000 40
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+And finally write the U-Boot binary:
|
|
|
+nand write 0x4a000000 0x800000 0xc0000
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+You can now reboot and enjoy your NAND.
|