Is anyone (linaro or community) working on this?
based on my persolan observations, feel free to correct me if i am wrong
I think they are…
That is an upstream kernel which sees active development. I think they are waiting for this or the 4.9 branch to be stable enough for release and then we can have a debian based distro for it.
Linux pre-built images are available for quite some time but not advertised yet:
https://builds.96boards.org/snapshots/reference-platform/openembedded/morty/hikey960/rpb/latest/
They are a work in progress. There’s 2 issues that we’d like to address:
- switch to UEFI
- get Mali userspace drivers and integrate them
For UEFI, we’re close. For Mali, we don’t have yet the Mali binaries yet and it’s under discussion.
Note1: the current images are console only.
Note2: Debian images will be available soon, they need to be updated to latest changes made on OE.
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We’d like the Linux release images (Debian and OE) to have UEFI and a 4.9 kernel to start with a working accelerated desktop.
However, in the interest of “release early, release often” Fabo has already supplied links to the snapshot openembedded images. It is strongly suggested that folks keep updating to the latest snapshots as they become available.
At some point, when everything falls into place, we will tag it to be a “release”.
directions to flash?
Download images from https://builds.96boards.org/snapshots/reference-platform/openembedded/morty/hikey960/rpb/latest/:
- boot-*.img
- dt-*.img
- rpb-console-image-hikey960-*.rootfs.img.gz
Uncompress the rootfs image with gunzip:
$ gunzip rpb-console-image-hikey960-*.img.gz
Flash the images with fastboot:
$ sudo fastboot flash boot boot-*.img
$ sudo fastboot flash dts dt-*.img
$ sudo fastboot flash system rpb-console-image-hikey960-*.rootfs.img
Note: kernel has been updated today with cpuidle/cpufreq features. I suggest to pick up the upcoming build. It should be build #62.
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thanks, also i see a grub.efi file. does it mean efi is working.
also i see console as well as desktop images have a lava-hikey960 img.gz as well. what is it?
Is this supposed to be uart only?
Yes. For the time being the images are (UART) console only.
hmmm… that mean’s i’ll have to wait for logic level shifter to arrive.
is it on uart 0 or 1?
Should be on LS-UART1.
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sadly the new logic level converter is also not working at 1.8v. I guess the max it goes it till 2.8v. The seeed studio uart has very high shipping cost so i can’t buy it. Have any better solution for uart atm?
can someone confirm that this chipset would work for uart
sorry to spam this thread, but i’ve learnt something from my stupidity and just want to share it here. It seems that there are usb-ttl devices that utilize the ft232rl chipset. these usually have jumpers on them to select 3.3 and 5.0v and it turns out that is just to restrict stuff to thoes voltages. if you remove thoes jumpers and not set them at anything thing then the happily work as low as 1.8v connecting only the tx rx and gnd pins.
http://www.amazon.in/REES52-FT232RL-Download-Adapter-Arduino/dp/B00M1K412U
Hi @ric96
I’m a little surprised that adaptor works with the jumper removed.
The purpose of that jumper is to provide a reference voltage for the FT232. So one of the outer pins is connected to a 5v power rail and the other is connected to a 3v3 power rail. The centre pin can then be attached to either 5v, 3v3 or to some other value (2v5, 1v8, etc). The reference voltage powers the parts of the FT232 that send and receive signals to the base board.
Leaving it unconnected means that the FT232 will be drawing power on from circuits within the chip that are not designed to supply power. I suspect it ends up powering its I/O sections from the LS-UART1 TX pin (which is held at 1V8 when not in use). This is, IMHO, somewhat risky.
There is a 1v8 reference voltage provided by the LS connector (the one I advised you to locate earlier in the thread) and the FT232 is specified to work with a 1v8 reference voltage. If you get reliability problems you should consider connecting the centre pin to this… although I can’t do a proper review since I can’t see any circuit diagram for the adaptor.
Daniel.
yup that perfectly checks out!
see page no. 7 here:
the pin4, VCCIO and i quote the document "+1.8V to +5.25V supply to the UART Interface and CBUS group pins (1…3, 5, 6,
9…14, 22, 23). In USB bus powered designs connect this pin to 3V3OUT pin to
drive out at +3.3V levels, or connect to VCC to drive out at 5V CMOS level. This
pin can also be supplied with an external +1.8V to +2.8V supply in order to drive
outputs at lower levels. It should be noted that in this case this supply should
originate from the same source as the supply to VCC. This means that in bus
powered designs a regulator which is supplied by the +5V on the USB bus should "
and I have confirmed that the middle pin is indeed connected to VCCIO, but should i worry about the point
"…It should be noted that in this case this supply should
originate from the same source as the supply to VCC. This means that in bus
powered designs a regulator which is supplied by the +5V on the USB bus should “”
Well found!
I have to admit that I don’t know. I guess this is to ensure that the 3v3 and 1v8 parts of the FTDI share a common ground. FTDI certainly sell adapters based on FT232 that use an external voltage reference but there might be extra circuitry in them to “solve” this issue in the datasheet (the circuity is molded into the USB plug so there’s not real option to take a peek).
I guess the best I can say here is that, compared to having no voltage reference, it is not more broken to use an “alien” voltage reference!
Order a bunch of 1.8v 1117 LDOs. I’ll put one between vcc and gnd and have a 1.8v reference voltage foi vccio.
