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AtherosReferenceAP143

Adrian Chadd edited this page Nov 29, 2015 · 2 revisions

Qualcomm Atheros AP143 Reference Design Board

The AP143 is a Qualcomm Atheros reference design board for the QCA9533 (Honeybee.) It is a MIPS24kc based SoC with integrated 2x2 802.11n wifi, 10/100 ethernet switch, USB, PCIe and other pieces.

Overview

The AP143 board contains:

  • QCA9533v1 SoC
  • 32MB RAM
  • 4MB NOR flash
  • USB2.0
  • 2x2 wifi, but requires external antennas
  • 4 port 10/100 switch + 1 port WAN

Notably, PCIe is not exposed.

Boot messages

U-Boot 1.1.4 (May 30 2014 - 05:37:57)

ap143 - Honey Bee 2.0

DRAM:  32 MB
Top of RAM usable for U-Boot at: 82000000
Reserving 133k for U-Boot at: 81fdc000
Reserving 192k for malloc() at: 81fac000
Reserving 44 Bytes for Board Info at: 81fabfd4
Reserving 36 Bytes for Global Data at: 81fabfb0
Reserving 128k for boot params() at: 81f8bfb0
Stack Pointer at: 81f8bf98
Now running in RAM - U-Boot at: 81fdc000
Flash Manuf Id 0xc2, DeviceId0 0x20, DeviceId1 0x16
flash size 4MB, sector count = 64
Flash:  4 MB
Using default environment

In:    serial
Out:   serial
Err:   serial
Net:   ath_gmac_enet_initialize...
Fetching MAC Address from 0x81ff214c
Fetching MAC Address from 0x81ff214c
ath_gmac_enet_initialize: reset mask:c02200 
Scorpion ---->S27 PHY*
S27 reg init
: cfg1 0x800c0000 cfg2 0x7114
eth0: 00:03:7f:11:25:96
athrs27_phy_setup ATHR_PHY_CONTROL 4 :1000
athrs27_phy_setup ATHR_PHY_SPEC_STAUS 4 :10
eth0 up
Honey Bee ---->  MAC 1 S27 PHY *
S27 reg init
ATHRS27: resetting s27
ATHRS27: s27 reset done
: cfg1 0x800c0000 cfg2 0x7214
eth1: 00:03:7f:11:25:97
athrs27_phy_setup ATHR_PHY_CONTROL 0 :1000
athrs27_phy_setup ATHR_PHY_SPEC_STAUS 0 :10
athrs27_phy_setup ATHR_PHY_CONTROL 1 :1000
athrs27_phy_setup ATHR_PHY_SPEC_STAUS 1 :10
athrs27_phy_setup ATHR_PHY_CONTROL 2 :1000
athrs27_phy_setup ATHR_PHY_SPEC_STAUS 2 :10
athrs27_phy_setup ATHR_PHY_CONTROL 3 :1000
athrs27_phy_setup ATHR_PHY_SPEC_STAUS 3 :50
eth1 up
eth0, eth1
Setting 0x181162c0 to 0x50a1a100
Hit any key to stop autoboot:  0 
ath> 

Building

$ cd /path/to/FreeBSD-HEAD/src
$ /path/to/freebsd-wifi-build/bin/build ap143

The results will be in ../tftpboot/ .

Since 4MB is not enough flash to store kernel+rootfs, we'll put the rootfs on a USB drive.

To TFTP boot a kernel, just for testing:

ath> tftpboot 0x80600000 kernel.AP143.lzma.uImage
Trying eth0
eth0 link down
FAIL
Trying eth1
Using eth1 device
TFTP from server 192.168.1.10; our IP address is 192.168.1.1
Filename 'kernel.AP143.lzma.uImage'.
Load address: 0x80600000
Loading: #################################################################
         #################################################################
         #################################################################
         #################################################################
         ##################
done
Bytes transferred = 1423145 (15b729 hex)
ath> bootm 0x80600000

Flashing

We can't currently flash the unit; unfortunately it expects the kernel to be at the 3MB offset in the 4MB flash and we just don't fit in that space at the moment.