On Fri, Mar 3, 2017 at 12:48 AM, Paul Boddie paul@boddie.org.uk wrote:
On Thursday 2. March 2017 22.20.27 Siarhei Siamashka wrote:
On Thu, Mar 2, 2017 at 6:22 AM, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
lkcl@lkcl.net wrote:
On Thu, Mar 2, 2017 at 12:49 AM, zap zapper@openmailbox.org wrote: reverse-engineering i have come to the conclusion is a total - and
criminal - waste of time and effort. by the time all features are 100% stable it's several YEARS down the line. look at how long ago the A64 was released, and the libdram code STILL HAS NOT BEEN REVERSE-ENGINEERED. it's 200 lines of code for fuck's sake.
You are just very poorly informed about the status of A64 support. And it's quite funny that there are people who believe you rather than trying to get this information first hand.
Well, I posted the results of some enquiries a few weeks ago in the context of the Olimex laptop. Everything sounded very promising until this appeared:
"For the moment the only working Linux Kernel which supports all A64 features is the Allwinner Android Kernel. This Kernel is full of binary blobs, but the only one which could be used for demo. Beside the binary blobs many other things are broken, like the power management, different drivers like the LCD backlight PWM, wake up from suspend, eDP converter is not set properly and works just in 15 bit color mode etc etc. We have the hardware for 50 laptops ready (developer edition), but we do not want to ship before we take care for the software. At other hand we do not want to ship TERES I with Android or RemixOS also which are complete with binary blobs and will never be Open Source."
Source: https://olimex.wordpress.com/2017/02/07/fosdem-and-teres-i-update/
Some of that is specific to their laptop, but some of it seems relevant to any A64 device. Maybe you could reconcile what the Olimex people are saying with what you are claiming.
I guess, the emphasis was on *all* A64 features. And the mainline kernel clearly does not support *all* A64 features yet.
Also Olimex people are always saying that they don't do software and don't have software expertise in-house. The are not the best people to ask for this information.
If you have any definitive information to the contrary, particularly about the boot0 code that Luke appears to be referring to, please post links to it.
Regarding Luke's claim stated in bold letters, here is the commit in the mainline U-Boot, which has added the A64 DRAM controller support:
http://git.denx.de/?p=u-boot.git;a=commitdiff;h=1bc464be1fc559a3f6dc13342972...
But the reverse engineered A64 DRAM controller support code existed in experimental git branches many months before it finally landed upstream and anyone could try it.
The linux-sunxi wiki was very vague on such matters last time I checked. And yes, I have seen the "mainlining effort" page:
https://linux-sunxi.org/Linux_mainlining_effort#Status_Matrix
It's very good that you have found this page. You can clearly see many links to the work-in progress branches that are used for developing various drivers and test them.
If you don't understand something, you can always join the #linux-sunxi irc channel on freenode and ask around.