u-boot on nadflash for at91sam9260ek

Hello all,
I'm working with u-boot for booting in nandflash with the evaluation board atmel at91sam9260ek. Nandflash reads ok, but performing and erase doesn`t work.

I get these messages trying to erase a block of the nand and writing the environment variables to nandflash.

Any help? I'm missing a configuration parameter in config or what may happens?

U-Boot> saveenv
Saving Environment to NAND...
Erasing redundant Nand...Timeout!U-Boot>
U-Boot>

U-Boot> nand erase 0x60000 0x20000

NAND erase: device 0 offset 0x60000, size 0x20000
Timeout!
SAM NAND 256MiB 3,3V 8-bit: MTD Erase failure: -5

OK

Victor Librado Sancho
Departamento I+D
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Victor Librado ha scritto:

Victor,
you should check registers settings and timing into yourboard.h configuration file

Ciao

Marco Cavallini
Koan s.a.s. - Bergamo - Italia
Embedded and Real-Time Software Engineering
http://www.KoanSoftware.com - http://www.KaeilOS.com

Hi Victor,

I also have this exact same problem on my at91sam9260ek. Nand works fine in linux but not in U-boot.

However when I use the patched u-boot from Atmel (based on an older version of u-boot) nand works.

Maybe there are some clues in there somewhere.

Regards
Chris

Thanks all,

By now I use u-boot-1.1.5 version with atmel 1.3 patch. Definitions of timing access for nandflash in my board.h as in linux board initialization.

The configuration nand parameters as follows:

#define NAND_MAX_CHIPS 1 /* Max number of NAND
devices */
#define CFG_MAX_NAND_DEVICE 1 /* Max number of NAND
devices */
#define SECTORSIZE 512
#define CFG_NAND_BASE 0x40000000
#define CONFIG_NEW_NAND_CODE

#define ADDR_COLUMN                    1
#define ADDR_PAGE                      2
#define ADDR_COLUMN_PAGE               3

#define NAND_ChipID_UNKNOWN 0
#define NAND_MAX_FLOORS 1
#undef CFG_NAND_WP

#define CFG_NO_FLASH 1

#undef CFG_ENV_IS_IN_FLASH
#undef CFG_ENV_IS_IN_DATAFLASH
#define CFG_ENV_IS_IN_NAND 1

/*#define CONFIG_MTD_DEBUG 1
#define CONFIG_MTD_DEBUG_VERBOSE MTD_DEBUG_LEVEL3
*/
#ifdef CFG_ENV_IS_IN_NAND

#define CFG_ENV_OFFSET  0x60000         /* environment starts here  */
#define CFG_ENV_SIZE    0x20000         /* 1 sector = 128kB */

#endif

Now when I try to erase nand sector of environment variables or saveenv environment variables I get these messages:

U-Boot> nand erase 0x60000 0x20000

NAND erase: device 0 offset 0x60000, size 0x20000
Skipping bad block at 0x00060000

OK
U-Boot> saveenv
Saving Environment to NAND...
Erasing Nand...nand_erase: attempt to erase a bad block at page 0x000000c0 U-Boot>

I looked into source code and when saving environmet variables the erase functions exits if it finds a bad block, as in this case. environment variables are not saved.

Is it a problem of this sector of my nandflash that is kaputt (change my nandflash of my board?)? I read in nandflash datasheet that is normal the presence of bad blocks in a flash and that it should be created a table with the index of the bad blocks and skip them... U-boot can process in this way activiting some variables? (maybe i should use the old nand_legacy way ...?)

Or it must be configured u-boot in some way to skip bad block and continuing with the erasing and saving variables process ....

Or may be I am totally puzzled....

Victor Librado Sancho
Departamento I+D
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