System boot and recovery via microSD card (BELK/BXELK)

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Bora5-small.jpg Applies to Bora
BORA Xpress.png Applies to BORA Xpress
BORALite-TOP.png Applies to BORA Lite

History[edit | edit source]

Version Date BELK version Notes
1.0.0 November 2015 3.0.0 First release
2.0.0 December 2016 BELK 3.0.1 / BXELK 1.0.0 Added information about new kits
3.0.0 July 2017 BELK 4.0.0 / BXELK 2.0.0 Added information about new kits


System boot and recovery via microSD card[edit | edit source]

BELK provides a bootable microSD that can be used not only to quickly start the system, but also as a recovery method in case the primary boot device (eg. QSPI NOR flash) gets erased or corrupted. The following sections describe how to create a bootable SD card and how to configure the system for booting from SD. This article, for example, shows how to make use of such a card to restore the U-Boot image onto the NOR flash.


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It is worth remembering that the bootable microSD card described in this article is not configured to perform a full boot sequence, including the operating system bootstrap. The bootable microSD card delivered along with the kit is set up to do a full bootstrap sequence, instead. For more details, please refer to this section.

How to create a bootable microSD card[edit | edit source]

BELK <= 3.0.2 / BXELK <= 1.0.1[edit | edit source]

This section describes how to create a new bootable microSD card from scratch for BELK <= 3.0.2 and BXELK <= 1.0.1. The following components must be available:

  • FSBL built with Vivado 2014.4 as described here
  • U-boot built in elf format, as described in here
  • FPGA bitstream (optional).

The procedure is the following:

  • from the Vivado 2014.4 SDK, apply the required patches to the main.c project file.This step can be done in two ways:
    • manually, directly modifying the main.c file adding the following code snippets:
----CUT----
	/*
	 * Unlock SLCR for SLCR register write
	 */
	SlcrUnlock();

+	*((u32 *)0xF8000830) = 0x003F003F;
+	*((u32 *)0xF8000834) = 0x003F003F;

	/* If Performance measurement is required 
	 * then read the Global Timer value , Please note that the
----CUT----

----CUT----
	/*
	 * Read bootmode register
	 */
	BootModeRegister = Xil_In32(BOOT_MODE_REG);
	BootModeRegister &= BOOT_MODES_MASK;

+	// always init QSPI
+	InitQspi();
	
	/*
	 * QSPI BOOT MODE
	 */
#ifdef XPAR_PS7_QSPI_LINEAR_0_S_AXI_BASEADDR
----CUT----
    • automatically, using the Apply Patch function and selecting the belk-sd-boot.patch file provided with the BELK (please refer to the following images):
Automatic patch applying (1/3)
Automatic patch applying (2/3)
Automatic patch applying (3/3)
  • once the patch is applied, rebuild the FSBL project
  • from the Xilinx Tools menu, select Create Zynq Boot Image
  • select Create New BIF file and insert path and name of the .bif file
  • in the Boot image partitions section, click on Add to browse and add the following files:
    • FSBL in .elf format, with bootloader as partition type
    • (optional) FPGA bitstream in .bit format, with partition type datafile
    • U-boot binary with .elf extension, with partition type datafile
  • in the Output path section, browse and select the path where saving the boot.bin file
  • on a PC, format the microSD card creating a FAT32 partition
  • copy the boot.bin file to the microSD card FAT32 partition.

BELK-4.0.0 / BXELK-2.0.0[edit | edit source]

This section describes how to create a new bootable microSD card from scratch for BELK-4.0.0 and BXELK-2.0.0. The following components must be available:

  • U-boot SPL and U-boot second stage built as described in here
  • FPGA bitstream (optional).

The procedure is the following:

  • on a PC, format the microSD card creating a FAT32 partition
  • copy the following files to the microSD card FAT32 partition:
    • U-boot SPL: boot.bin
    • U-boot second stage: u-boot.img
    • Fpga bitstream .bit (optional): fpga.bit

How to configure the system for microSD boot[edit | edit source]

For BORA / BORA Evaluation kit systems please refer to this link.

For BORA Xpress/ BORA xpress Evaluation kit systems please refer to this link.

For BORA Lite Evaluation kit systems please refer to this link.


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In case the microSD card provided along with the kit is used, the Programmable Logic is automatically programmed with the example design during the boot process.