RTEMS, Bootloaders and HW parameters

[Joel Sherrill]

I think this is a good idea.  I wonder what Ed Sutter
thinks.  He would be an excellent resource here.

--joel

Thomas Dörfler wrote:
> Hi,
>
> some days ago I onve again added support to pass parameters from a
> specific boot loader (Freescale DBug) to an RTEMS BSP. While I was
> modifying the ethernet driver and the console driver and the bsp startup
> to get bts and pieces from the boot loader, I got the impression that
> this is all wrong :-(
>
> The parameters I am talking about are:
> - console baud rate
> - UART port to be used for console
> - actual memory start/end address (or addresses...)
> - CPU clock speed
> - BUS clock speed
> - base clock speed for peripherals (like UART, timers...)
> - ethernet MAC addresses
> - primary ethernet port to be used
> - initial IP addesses for client, server, DNS, gateway....
>
> Wouldn't it make sense to establish a different structure to collect and
> then spread this information? What I have in mind is sort of a database,
> (in fact this can be an extended BSP configuration  structure or
> something similar), that allows to:
>
> - write a routine like "bsp_params_init_from_boot()", that fetches as
> much info as possible from the boot loader and stores it in this
> bsp_params database
>
> - have a mechanism to override these parameters from bspopts.h, of set there
>
> - have a function that can be used by all drivers to get the relevant
> values.
>
> This would allow us to make many drivers generic again, even the
> questions "where do I get the initial baudrate", "which port should be
> /dev/console", "what is the system bus frequency" etc. would get generic
> answers.
>
> What do you all think about this?
> Should I make a proposal for such a database?
>
> wkr,
> Thomas.
>
>
>