spacewrench

Excellent! The support person at Alfa just sent me the JTAG pinout. If anyone else is interested, it is: VDD25----R7-----TRST_L-------R8-------GND (R7 & R8 not populated?) TDI------R9------GND TDO----R10-----GND TMS----R11-----GND TCK----R12-----GND Also: TP1=TRST_L TP2=TDI TP3=TDO TP4=TMS TP5=TCK Test points 2-5 are near the dogleg in the thick ground trace around the CPU (where the shield would be soldered, if the device had a shield). I don't see TP1 yet. [edit: it's slightly inboard of the 4-pin UART header] [edit 2: remember, it's 2.5V JTAG. 2.9V or higher and you'll be sorry!]

Were you using one installed bootloader to load the next one? Or do you know a way to flash code directly into the chip? I found the Flash chip on the back of the board (Macronix 25L12835P, 16MB) but I don't have an interface to write to it yet. (I was thinking of wiring up a little microcontroller to twiddle the address/data lines, but if there's an easier way...) Other question is, it should be easy to get the full 64MB of RAM if you can get a kernel booted, right? Worst case, you have to set some command-line variables or hard-code some values when you build Linux or whatever. I was able to build uBoot for a Seagate Dockstar (Kirkwood-ARM) a year or two ago, so I wasn't really expecting a lot of trouble building the bootloader for this device, if I could just get it into the Flash!

Did you get a response immediately on the UART? When I power up my board, the LEDs come on half-bright, and there's no output (or response to input) on the serial connection. I've left it like that for a couple of hours, and nothing ever happened. I'm pretty sure there's no bootloader at all in my Flash. You gotta figure, though, that the factory has _some_ way of burning initial bootloaders, unless they burn them onto the chips before they solder them. But that seems somewhat unlikely on a product that is specifically designed to be flashed with new code.

OK thanks...I have several AP121U boxes, and I have serial working on the the 8/32 models. But it really looks like I need to find the JTAG before I can get the 16/64 one going, though. Regards!

Sorry, I couldn't find the JTAG pinout in there -- only the 4-pin serial connector. No hits for search on JTAG, either. I hate to be That Guy, but would really appreciate it if you could link the article!

Has anyone seen the JTAG pinout for the Alfa AP121 Hornet router board? I bought one of the 16/64MB versions, but it came without any bootloader at all (apparently -- it powers up with LEDs half-bright, and no messages or activity on the console serial). My seller told me it's not DOA, but rather simply has not been flashed. If I can find the pinout, I'll build a U-Boot with the correct flash memory sizes in it. Thanks!