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Linux support for the Topas 910
| Project: | Topas 910 BSP |
|---|---|
| Scope: | Linux port and board support |
| Contributors: | Florian |
| Started: | 2008 |
| Status: | active, mostly stable |
![[Topes 910 / TMPA910]](/static/topas910-320.png)
Linux Port and Board Support for the Toshiba Topas 910
The TOPAS 910 is an evaluation board for the Toshiba TMPA910CRAXGB system on chip. The 200MHz clocked ARM9 chip has a builtin TFT controller, USB device port and several more peripheral interfaces. The pretty looking black and golden board offers all important peripherals and connectors for development (JTAG, RS232, US, Ethernet, display SD, GPIO and audio). Apart from several commercial real time systems there are two Linux support packages by BPlan: A supported one relying on a proprietary Openfirmware-like bootloader and an unsupported standalone Linux port - not complete, but useful and well documented.
We did some modification to the released sources and integrated support for the device to OpenEmbedded. The port is based on Linux 2.6.32 now and includes a driver for the GPIO framework, LED display and the joypad. The lack from mass storage support apart from the small NOR flash currently is a limitation. To use a larger root filesystem you need an NFS server. Update: NAND flash support is available in Git (see link below).
Update: We have merged a large update from Toshiba - NAND and Audio support are in Git. Basic support for the newer Topas A900 is available too. We have cleaned up the board support in the Linux tree so that you can select if you want support for the TopasA900 or Topas910. Integrating support for a new board based on one of these SoC is quite easy now.
Support Status
| Component | Support Status |
|---|---|
| Basic device support (CPU, memory, serial port) | works |
| Display | works |
| USB peripheral port | works maybe |
| Ethernet | works |
| NOR Flash | works |
| NAND Flash | works but buggy |
| Audio | works, 2.6.30+ |
| SD / MMC | unsupported and not documented |
| GPIO | works mostly |
| 7-segment Display | works |
| Joypad | works |
| Touchscreen | works |
| ADC | no driver yet |
| RTC | works |
| I2C | supposed to work, not tested here |
How to test...
Download the demo filesystem image provided below. The archive contains a single image file that can be installed using the JTAG tool an application provided with the board. Use the board specific command line flasher like this:
JLinkFlashToshibaTOPAS910.exe topas910-uboot-kernel-gpe_nor.img
The full demo image contains an Angström filesystem with a small GPE PDA-like graphical user interface. It fits in the NOR flash of the board and contains a major share of the GMAE componets such as GTK+, X11 and DBus. The filesystem was build using OpenEmbedded.
The "mini" image contains the U-Boot bootloader and a Linux kernel with initfs. This can be used for further evaluation. The initrd will try to mount a root filesystem from NOR flash, so if you append a valid file system to the provided image it will be used.
The LED display can be used by writing a number to a sysfs file:
echo 5 > /sys/devices/platform/led-topas/led_segmentIt is possible to displays the digits 0..9, '10' displays 'L.', '11' clears the display, '12' turns all segments on, '13' turns on the decimal dot only.
If you have questions about this demo just send me a mail.
Known limitations:
- Some things are not ready yet: Documentation and SDK
- The mini (initramfs) filesystem is very small and doesn't contain much of software.
Downloads
Flashable Linux image with GPE GUI filesystem (recommended, last update: 2009-05-18)
Standalone U-Boot image for development purposes
The current sources of kernel and U-Boot are available from KC Labs GIT.
Pictures
The GPE based Linux demo image launches on a Topas 910.