Atmel ATNGW100

The NGW100 Network Gateway Kit is a development board for the AT32AP7000 microcontroller, a member of the AVR32 family. The NGW100 has two Ethernet ports, a SD/MMC card reader, and connectors for USB (device mode only), serial console, and JTAG.

The following description assumes that you have

• a working TFTP server
• a build environment (you will have to build parts of OpenWRT yourself)
• a serial cable to connect the serial port

Since 8.09, the gzip compressed kernel is by far too large: it is about 3MB, and the flash section dedicated to it (0x20000 - 0x120000) is only 1MB.

Therefore, the lzma compressed kernel must be used for OpenWRT 8.09. Unfortunately, the preinstalled U-Boot does not support lzma compression (at least not on my board, which I bought around December 2008).

A version of U-Boot patched for lzma support can be built together with OpenWRT: in make menuconfig, choose Build U-Boot bootloader in the section Target Images. While you are at it, check also the entry jffs2 (see below). Save the configuraton and make. This should now build U-Boot along with OpenWRT.

U-Boot can then be installed with FlashUpgrade as follows: Download the Source Code of the FlashUpgrade tool (the pre-built binaries don't include the lzma patch).

git clone git://www.atmel.no/~hcegtvedt/flash-upgrade.git flash-upgrade 

Copy bin/u-boot-atngw100.bin from your OpenWRT tree into the unpacked source directory. Rename the copy to u-boot.bin. Make and install following the instructions from FlashUpgrade.

You should now have U-Boot 1.3.3 with lzma support.

Besides the boot loader, you need two more items in the flash

• the compressed Linux image (openwrt-avr32-uImage-lzma)
• the root file system (openwrt-avr32-jffs2-64k.img)

On the NGW100, you need to flash them separately. The jffs filesystem openwrt-avr32-jffs2-64k.img is not available for download from http://downloads.openwrt.org/kamikaze/8.09.1/avr32/, so you will have to build it yourself. If you have not yet done so, go back to menuconfig, open the entry “Target Images”. Make sure “jffs2” is selected. Save the confguration and make. Copy openwrt-avr32-uImage-lzma and openwrt-avr32-jffs2-64k.img to your TFTP server.

In Uboot: (bold means that this is something you have to enter, italic means that you have to put your actual value here)

Before we can flash anything, first erase the flash:
Uboot> erase 20000 7effff
............................................................................... done
Erased 125 sectors

Flashing is a two step process

• first load the file to RAM via TFTP
• then copy the loaded contents to the flash

This must be done for both the kernel and the root file system.

Details:

Give your board an IP address
Uboot> set ipaddr someaddressinyournet

Load the kernel into RAM at address 0x10000000:
Uboot> tftpboot 0x10000000 yourTftpServerAddress:openwrt-avr32-uImage-lzma

note the message:
Bytes transferred = 659998 (a121e hex)

The length in hex must be included in the next command

Copy to flash:

Uboot> cp.b 10000000 20000 a121e replace a121e with the number of bytes transferred above!

You can check whether U-Boot agrees with you:

Uboot> imls
should give something like:

Legacy Image at 00020000:
   Image Name:   OpenWrt Linux-2.6.25.20
   Image Type:   AVR32 Linux Kernel Image (lzma compressed)
   Data Size:    659934 Bytes = 644.5 kB
   Load Address: 10000000
   Entry Point:  90000000
   Verifying Checksum ... OK

Verify that the image type is “lzma compressed” and the data size is less than 1MB.

Now load the root file system into RAM at address 0x10000000:
Uboot> tftpboot 0x10000000 yourTftpServerAddress:openwrt-avr32-jffs2-64k.img

note the message:
Bytes transferred = 4390912 (430000 hex)

Copy to flash:

Uboot> cp.b 10000000 120000 430000 replace 430000 with the number of bytes transferred above!

IMPORTANT
Uboot> set bootargs console=ttyS0,115200 root=/dev/mtdblock2 rootfstype=jffs2 init=/etc/preinit
Uboot> set bootcmd bootm 0x20000
Uboot> saveenv

You may now boot the board.

On the first boot (and only then), you will see messages like these:

jffs2_scan_eraseblock(): Magic bitmask 0x1985 not found at 0x00000000: 0x3000 id
jffs2_scan_eraseblock(): Magic bitmask 0x1985 not found at 0x00000004: 0x0061 id
jffs2_scan_eraseblock(): Magic bitmask 0x1985 not found at 0x0000000c: 0xe3b2 id
jffs2_scan_eraseblock(): Magic bitmask 0x1985 not found at 0x00000010: 0x3001 id

Empty flash at 0x000115fc ends at 0x00011600

(Many more messages like these)

I don't know whether this is a bug or a feature

You should finally see:

jffs2_scan_eraseblock(): End of filesystem marker found at 0x420000
jffs2_build_filesystem(): unlocking the mtd device... done.
jffs2_build_filesystem(): erasing all blocks after the end marker... done.
VFS: Mounted root (jffs2 filesystem).

You should now have a working OpenWRT on AVR32

BusyBox v1.11.2 (2009-09-04 18:20:59 CEST) built-in shell (ash)
Enter 'help' for a list of built-in commands.

  _______                     ________        __
 |       |.-----.-----.-----.|  |  |  |.----.|  |_
 |   -   ||  _  |  -__|     ||  |  |  ||   _||   _|
 |_______||   __|_____|__|__||________||__|  |____|
          |__| W I R E L E S S   F R E E D O M
 KAMIKAZE (8.09.1, unknown) ----------------------------
  * 10 oz Vodka       Shake well with ice and strain
  * 10 oz Triple sec  mixture into 10 shot glasses.
  * 10 oz lime juice  Salute!
 ---------------------------------------------------
root@OpenWrt:/# df
Filesystem           1k-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
rootfs                    6976      1468      5508  21% /
/dev/root                 6976      1468      5508  21% /
tmpfs                    15584        28     15556   0% /tmp
tmpfs                      512         0       512   0% /dev
root@OpenWrt:/#

See here for a photo.
Note: The expansion headers are not present on the board, but it is possible to add them.

Since this part is identical for all devices, see Basic configuration.

To connect stuff to the USB port, please see Connect stuff to the USB port.

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