Installing and booting FriendlyArm mini6410

The basics

This section explains how the S3C6410 processor boots.

The processor has a boot rom, called "iROM" or "BL0" that is able to boot from two possible locations.

The iROM loads either the first 8k of NAND memory, or when told to boot SD, 8k of data from the SD card. The data loaded from the SD card is taken from "near the end" of the card. For the exact location see "Application Note (Internal ROM Booting) S3C6410X, july 24, 2008" from Samsung.

That 8k bootloader is sometimes called "BL1". It is loaded into a piece of SRAM inside the CPU. The code for this can be provided by "superboot".

This BL1 then initializes the SDRAM, and loads further bootloaders and/or the OS.

Superboot is able to read the first fat partition on the SD card, look into the /Images directory for a file called FriendlyARM.ini, and boot according to the instructions found therein.

Linux kernels are booted through a second stage bootloader called uboot. The binary (usually called uboot.bin) is usually stored in the Images directory or in a subdirectory thereof.

FriendlyARM.ini

explain syntax here.