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Booting eight 66AK2H12 devices from Ethernet

Dan LaChance
Expert 1770 points

Other Parts Discussed in Thread: 66AK2H12

Hello TI,

I have a customer working through the boot process and came up with a basic question that we can’t seem to find the answer to.

They have 8 66AK2H12 devices on the board and need to boot all 8 from Ethernet.  In order to do this they need each to have a unique MAC address.

They found how to set the GPIO pins for Ethernet boot.  They found the Ethernet Boot Parameters Table telling them where the boot loader looks to find the MAC address.  What we can’t find is anything that tells us how we're supposed to populate this table.

- How do I populate the Ethernet Boot Parameter Table?

Does the Ethernet boot loader load parameters from an external memory?  Is there a unique MAC address preprogrammed into each device?  Do we need to boot to I2C (or SPI) and have this device preload the parameter table then reboot to Ethernet?

This seems like a simple question, but my customer has looked through all the documents he can find on the device and even searched the online forums without any success.

 Any guidance you can provide on this would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Dan

  • 0
    TI__Guru* 81335 points

    Hi Dan,

    We are working on your query. We will get back to you shortly.

    Thank you.

  • 0
    TI__Guru* 81335 points

    Hi Dan,

    Q: Does the Ethernet boot loader load parameters from an external memory? 

    Please take a look at the Keystone II ARM Bootloader User Guide here: http://www.ti.com/lit/spruhj3

    Section 3.8 will overview Ethernet boot. For ARM master booting, the image should be built into a BLOB (binary large object file .bin) and transferred using a BootP/TFTP protocol. The RBL populates the initial ethernet boot parameter table based on the boot switches. you can override the boot parameter table from a secondary bootloader that can run from a secondary boot source or that is loaded over ethernet.

    Note: You shall debug the ethernet packets using ethernet protocol analyzer such as Wireshark etc.,

    Q: Is there a unique MAC address pre-programmed into each device?  

    Yes, it is pre-programmed in the device efuses.

    Q. Do we need to boot to I2C (or SPI) and have this device preload the parameter table then reboot to Ethernet?

    No. 

  • 0 in reply to Raja
    Prodigy 50 points

    Hi Rajasekaran K,

    I am the customer that Dan started this thread for (Thanks, Dan).

    The existence of a MAC address pre-programmed into device efuses is what I was missing.

    We are planning to use the DSP bootloader (not ARM), so I was reading sprugy5c.pdf instead.  It makes no reference to OTP memory or efuses, only that the MAC address comes from the parameter table with no hint as to how the table gets populated.

    Thanks for the answer.

    Jon