On 08/06/2011 03:26, Wookey wrote:
> +++ Patrick Doyle [2011-06-07 14:41 -0400]:
>> Is there any way to access the NOR flash from Linux on my BalloonBoard?
> 
> Not easily. It's not exposed as an mtdblock. It should be, but this is
> probably disruptive becuse it'll bump the numbers of existing
> /dev/mtdblock so bot config needs to change to match.

There's some history to this. Way back in about 2003, the Balloon 2
kernel was able to access NOR Flash from Linux. We had problems with the
NOR Flash getting corrupted from time to time on a couple of boards. As
part of trying to figure out what was going wrong, we disabled NOR
access from the kernel. We haven't experienced NOR corruption since, but
we have no strong evidence that this is really what fixed it. Much else
has changed, not least the method of programming NOR which is less flaky
than it has ever been.

Nobody missed NOR access from the kernel at the time so support for it
just withered away.

Chris

-- 
Chris Jones - chris@martin-jones.com
Martin-Jones Technology Ltd c/o Element Energy Ltd
Twenty Station Road, Cambridge, CB1 2JD, UK
Phone +44 (0) 1223 655611 Fax +44 (0) 870 112 3908