[Gen8 General] scholbert:
Hey geeks,

you might know my hardware hacking thread already:

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1199450

Some time ago i started thinking about starting with an open bootloader for Archos Gen8.

So i started from scratch and made use of external boot mode to completely start from external MicroSD and leave the internal memory alone.

Remark: This is a geek project, there's no GUI or something. So don't expect anything useful right now.

At the moment you'll need some hardware hacking, because you'll need a serial console over uart3.

Unfortunately you'll also need a dirty hack to power up the MicroSD permanently.

Don't hesitate to ask for details about it.

So this is for the weird ones out there... :D

Right now there's work in progress, because stock kernel stucks at some point in the boot process.

Maybe there's some setup missing in the bootcode (it's very basic at the moment) or stock kernel relies heavily on avboot at some point.

I will work on this issue whenever i'll find some time.

Anyway it might be still an interesting project for at least a very few of you, so here's the source code:

- x-loader-archos

- u-boot-2011.09-archos

As pointed out the Archos implementation is very basic at the moment, but the code itself works very well and had been tested on A101IT Gen8.

To further devices, e.g. A70S Gen8, the machine id had to be included in the board file, the rest of the setup in early stage should be very similar.

The code bases:

- x-loader (https://gitorious.org/x-loader/x-loader)

- u-boot (taken from this archive: http://www.technexion.com/images/downloads/ARM_CPU_Modules/TDM-3730/linux-2.6.32-tdm3730.tar.xz)

I'd like to switch to official u-boot release 2011.09 as a base soon.

To start playing with it:

- open your case and start hacking, to get serial console working

- tweak the hardware to power the MicroSD slot permanently

- create a bootable MicroSD for OMAP systems

- place the binaries on your card

- insert the card and use vitalifs kernel module to reboot your device in external bootmode

Please refer to these posts from vitalif (thanks a lot for contributing!!!):

http://xdaforums.com/showpost.php?p=22719203&postcount=105

http://xdaforums.com/showpost.php?p=22765441&postcount=108

You might start digging in the source code and create your own loader:

- use a linux machine with a recent distribution

- setup a cross environment with ARM cross compiler suitable for ARMV7

- extract the sources to directory of your choice

- to compile x-load:

cd ./x-loader-archos
make archos_config
make

- to compile u-boot-2011.09-archos:

cd ./u-boot-2011.09-archos
make a101it_config
make

It might be required to tweak the top-level Makefiles to point at your toolchain.

I used my ready to work toolchain (for 32-bit linux only) here:

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1328027

Unfortunately i haven't found some time to create a project page at gitorious,

but hopefully i'll manage to do so in the next weeks...

I know this is a very very special project, but anyway if there's some interest, this might lead to something useful in the end.

If the bootcode is working very nice some day, it might also be possible to replace stock loader, but that's fiction yet.

You might ask what for...

I say... it's just for fun!

cheers,

scholbert