[Prism54-devel] Prism54 development update

[Jean-Baptiste Note]

Hi Denis,

> So you have a disassembly which you cannot (or don't plan to)
> modify, compile, and load into real hardware. You use it as a documentation,
> right? And want to write your fw from scratch, right?
>  

Exactly. 

I'd add that i wouldn't be in favor of recompiling/modifying/recompiling
the asm we have as you suggested earlier. 

This would clearly breach even sensible copyright laws. Here in France i
have the right to reverse-engeneer their code, but I have no right to
modify it and redistribute it.

The closest to clean-room that we can do (and which keeps us within the
precincts of what is allowed by law), is to use the disassembled
firmware as documentation.

> What toolchain do I need to build? Gcc? binutils? What versions of those
> known to work? What patches to apply, if any?

This information is on the wiki, along with a nice script which will do
most of the work for you.

> Examples/HOWTOs how to get firmware to load in real or emulated hardware?

This is simple enough. You load freemac as you would another firmware.

> What is that FreeMAC/ISLMON? Can I load it into fullmac?

Freemac is the firmware's reimplementation. ISLMON is the userland
utility used to 

> If not, where should I start to fix that?

On linux, you need to 

1/ implement the driver layer needed to talk to the firmware (that's the
UARTPCI protocol) into the linux driver. Coordinate with me on this, as
i may be working on it as soon as today :)

2/ port the userspace utility ISLMON, which is not really required to
play once 1/ above is done correctly.

> IOW, I need something like http://www.uclinux.org/pub/uClinux/utilities/armulator/,
> but s/ucLinux/prism54/

I don't understand IOW (!) but you don't need anything like armulator to
do this. Emulation has been usefull to uncompress the firmware. It may
be usefull after in order to observe how the firmware acts/reacts
(seeing the code run instead of only reading it), but this is still
another step.

JB