readme.txt
1Broadcom Northstar
2
3Intro
4=====
5
6This readme covers Northstar family of Broadcom SoCs. It includes:
7 - BCM4708 (2 x 800 MHz)
8 - BCM47081 (1 x 800 MHz)
9 - BCM4709 (2 x 1 GHz)
10 - BCM47094 (2 x 1 GHz) (AKA BCM4709C0)
11
12Northstar platform is used in some home routers by multiple vendors. There are
13over 100 market devices based on it and they can all be supported with 1 kernel.
14
15There is no point in having separated board for each model. This board code is
16meant for all supported Northstar devices.
17
18All Northstar devices come with CFE bootloader by default. It's basically closed
19source as sources are available for some old releases only. There is no U-Boot (or
20any other) drop-in replacement or second stage loader with Northstar support.
21
22CFE supports flashing firmware images over TFTP and HTTP (depending on vendor /
23device setup).
24
25How to build it
26===============
27
28 $ make broadcom_northstar_defconfig
29
30 $ make
31
32How to flash over HTTP
33======================
34
35Power on device and press (and hold) CTRL+C in serial console terminal. When CFE
36gets into prompt mode it'll automatically start built-in HTTP server. Navigate
37to http://192.168.1.1/ (unless IP was changed - verify with "ifconfig") and
38upload new firmware using a web browser.
39