moving to same chip, different board: no console output

[David Picard]

I copied the handoff files from a Quartus sample project released by the 
manufacturer, Enclustra.

Any hint about the debug output below is welcome.

I put some pr_debug() in arch/arm/cpu/uncompress.c, and it seems to 
execute until the last line: barebox(membase, memsize, handoff_data);
https://github.com/barebox/barebox/blob/796506e790596a0b59c186651cf98112eafe01c5/arch/arm/cpu/uncompress.c#L106

I'm trying to boot from the SD card. I copied and adapted Buildroot 
genimage.cfg from the Terasic DE0 board.
Device             Boot Start    End Sectors  Size Id Type
images/sdcard.img1          1   2048    2048    1M a2 unknown
images/sdcard.img2 *     2049  18432   16384    8M  c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
images/sdcard.img3      18433 264192  245760  120M 83 Linux

The FAT32 partition contains:
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 375K juil.  1  2025 barebox.bin
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  600 juil.  1  2025 barebox.env
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  26K juil.  1  2025 socfpga_cyclone5_mercury_sa2.dtb
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 5,9M juil.  1  2025 zImage


David

Le 30/06/2025 à 15:23, David Picard a écrit :
> Hello,
>
> I can get an output on the console! I switched to v2025.06.1 and 
> enabled CONFIG_DEBUG_LL, CONFIG_PBL_CONSOLE and CONFIG_DEBUG_PBL.
>
> Could you help me to interpret this ?
>
> -------------------------
>
> barebox 2025.06.1 #2 Mon Jun 30 15:01:21 CEST 2025
>
>
> Board: SoCFPGA
> No consoles were activated. Activating all consoles as fallback!
> dw_mmc dw_mmc0: registered as mci0
> mci0: detected SD card version 2.0
> mci0: registered disk0
> starting bootloader...
> uncompress.c: memory at 0x00000000, size 0x40000000
> mmu: enabling MMU, ttb @ 0x3ffe0000
> endmem                = 0x40000000
> arm_mem_scratch       = 0x3fff8000+0x00008000
> arm_mem_stack         = 0x3fff0000+0x00008000
> arm_mem_ttb           = 0x3ffe0000+0x00010000
> arm_mem_barebox_image = 0x3fe00000+0x00200000
> arm_mem_early_malloc  = 0x3fde0000+0x00020000
> membase               = 0x00000000+0x40000000
> uncompress.c: uncompressing barebox binary at 0x1ff8c5e0 (size 
> 0x00056c32) to 0x3fe00000 (uncompressed size: 0x000778b0)
> uncompress.c: jumping to uncompressed image at 0x3fe00001
>
> -----------
>
> End of log, no prompt.
>
> David
>
>
> Le 16/06/2025 à 12:39, Ahmad Fatoum a écrit :
>> Hi David,
>>
>> On 6/11/25 13:46, David Picard wrote:
>>> Hello,
>>>
>>> I took the same Buildroot configuration. I replaced the .dts* files 
>>> with
>>> the ones provided by the new board BSP. Actually, they differ quite a
>>> lot from the Altera SoC FPGA .dts* files in the Linux tree. Then, I
>>> compiled and flashed the SD card.
>> The device trees don't have the whole story. There is Quartus-generated
>> C board code that sets up the DRAM controller for example, so just
>> replacing the device tree doesn't work so early.
>>
>>> I enabled CONFIG_DEBUG_LL with no change. CONFIG_DEBUG_PBL doesn't 
>>> exist
>>> in my case. For some reason, the defconfig I built upon, uses Barebox
>>> v2021.07.0, which is probably outdated...
>> v2021.07.0 predated CONFIG_DEBUG_PBL, yes.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Ahmad
>>
>>> David
>>>
>>> Le 06/06/2025 à 19:46, Ahmad Fatoum a écrit :
>>>> Hello David,
>>>>
>>>> On 06.06.25 16:43, David Picard wrote:
>>>>> Hello,
>>>>>
>>>>> I am working on a project for which we selected an Intel/Altera
>>>>> Cyclone 5 SoC FPGA (an FPGA with an ARM core). As the project
>>>>> evolves, I have to change boards and I am facing issues to boot:
>>>>> absolutely no output on the serial console (USB virtual COM port),
>>>>> not even from Barebox.
>>>>>
>>>>> Previous working configuration:
>>>>> - SD card image produced by Buildroot with Barebox as the bootloader
>>>>> - Terasic ADC-SoC demo board, booting from the SD card.
>>>>> https://www.terasic.com.tw/cgi-bin/page/archive.pl?
>>>>> Language=English&No=1061&PartNo=1
>>>>>
>>>>> Current non-working configuration:
>>>>> - Eclustra Mercury+ SA2 module, also with a Cyclone 5, plus SDRAM,
>>>>> RTC, QSPI flash, etc. I think that the main difference between both
>>>>> Cyclone 5 chips is the size of the logic section is bigger on the
>>>>> module. The module has more RAM.
>>>>> https://www.enclustra.com/en/products/system-on-chip-modules/mercury-
>>>>> sa2/
>>>>> - Enclustra ST1 demo baseboard. It has a JTAG port, should this
>>>>> information be of interest.
>>>>> https://www.enclustra.com/en/products/base-boards/mercury-st1/
>>>>>
>>>>> I the current configuration, I get no output on the serial console.
>>>> So you tried to use the exact same image on both boards or were
>>>> there changes?
>>>>
>>>>> What I did:
>>>>> - I checked the hardware configuration (switches to select booting
>>>>> from the SD card and USB config) with a bare-metal application
>>>>> provided by Enclustra.
>>>>> - I used Enclutra's .dts and .dtsi files, which differ very slightly
>>>>> from the Linux kernel tree files.
>>>>> - I checked how the SD card is connected: to the exact same pins in
>>>>> both configurations.
>>>>> - I had a look at Barebox menuconfig, but nothing caught my eye.
>>>>>
>>>>> So, now I'm stuck, and I'm looking for some guidance.
>>>> You can try enabling CONFIG_DEBUG_LL and CONFIG_DEBUG_PBL and see 
>>>> if you
>>>> get some debugging output maybe. You'll have to choose which UART 
>>>> to use.
>>>>
>>>> I think your new SoM may have different RAM and thus you can't use the
>>>> same image, but need one suitable to RAM integrated on your new board.
>>>>
>>>> Cheers,
>>>> Ahmad
>>>>
>>>>> David
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>
>>>
>
>