Building new Board , how to add support for it MT7688A

For Developers
1

Hello all,

Currently designing a board based MT7688A ( could be any other equivalent one) chip and would like flash/install Openwrt from scratch.

I was able to find a video/guide about the boot mechanism

  • first stage bootloader
  • second stage bootloader ( U-Boot?)
  • third stage bootloader ( optional)
  • firmware ( Openwrt)

I also found a guideline to build/compile firmware for MT7688A
My questions:

Do I need to flash any first stage bootloader ?
if yes, which one ? is there any information on this ?

Thanks for any guidance or analog example.

Cheers

2

usually (there are exceptions) openwrt doesn't touch what you've listed as the first three.

3

Thanks for the remark.

Do you have any link to the exceptions or is there an option to just load openwrt without any special bootloader?

This is possible in general for microcontrollers , not sure how this can work for microprocessors.

Would be thankful for any hint

Cheers

4

the Redmi AX6000, where the preloader and U-boot can to be replaced, for the user to be able to change the flash layout. it's not a mandatory modification, but required if you want more flash space.

AFAIK there's always a boot loader of some kind, it's often used to flash (or recover) a device.

no idea, that's above my pay grade.

1 Like
5

thanks frollic!

that helps in my investigation. It happens they use a similar processors ( MT7xxx).

Will keep this question open, perhaps I can answer it myself later after reading about the Xiaomi Router setup

Cheers

6
1 Like
7

will check the sample u-boot and openwrt version.

Thanks!

8

just so we're clear, there's no relation between those two, two separate pieces of software, but openwrt can't live without u-boot, on most platforms.

9

thanks frollic for the remark, this is well understood from the beginning.

As usual and it is always my problem :slight_smile: I try to understand the whole process and then I go for the implementation...

I checked also some boot console logs form other devices... and will map the sequence.

need to solder the board first and check what is inside the chip already, based on the that, need to update respective partition.

as mentioned before, will keep the question open so others and myself can add comments later

Cheers