by way of helping me tidy up the BB validation page, some questions:
1) at this point, given that the version of u-boot that most boards
shipped with and the one that's currently used for validation is
fairly old -- 2009.01-dirty (Feb 19 2009 - 12:23:21) -- is there any
validation value in simply telling users to just update the u-boot
that's on their board and be done with it? (or at least consistently
boot from a newer version off their MMC/SD card?)
i'm assuming that the one that's built for the beagle from the OE
dev branch for angstrom would work just fine, yes? or is there
another version that can simply be defined as the new validation
standard and everyone should use that one?
2) i'm reading the validation reset script that flashes a new x-loader
and u-boot and, regarding the x-loader, i see:
if fatload mmc 0 80200000 x-load.bin.ift
then
echo ***** Replacing x-load *****
nand unlock
nandecc hw
nand erase 0 80000
nand write 80200000 0 20000
nand write 80200000 20000 20000
nand write 80200000 40000 20000
nand write 80200000 60000 20000
fi
first question -- is there any reason to update the x-loader? does
the current version do anything the older version doesn't? and what's
going on above? it looks like the flashable x-loader image (size
20392 bytes) is being flashed four times, one after another. is that
right? why?
3) for a truly comprehensive validation page, there should be a
standard collection of files (audio, video, etc.) that come *with* the
validation instructions so people don't have to go looking for files
for any of the tests.
case in point: the current validation page:
http://code.google.com/p/beagleboard/wiki/BeagleboardRevCValidation
has a section, "To Test Audio-In Interface", which has the user create
an audio file, followed by "To Test Audio-Out Interface, Playback the
recorded Audio". but if the user, for some reason, can't do that
first test, then he won't have an audio file for the second test.
that shouldn't happen -- as much as possible, the validation page
tests should be standalone and not depend on earlier tests working.
and there should be a nice collection of test files so that everyone's
tests are consistent, and the validation instructions can instruct
users to simply copy all those test files to their MMC/SD card so they
have access to them after booting.
thoughts?
rday