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hz12opensource / libresdr

Firmware with overclock support for LibreSDR (PlutoSDR clone with Zynq 7020), 27.5 MSPS sample rate over Gigabit Ethernet with libiio/PlutoSDR API
GNU General Public License v3.0
73 stars 10 forks source link

Changing Pre-Built Firmware Releases #8

Open TechMindsYT opened 6 months ago

TechMindsYT commented 6 months ago

Hi Guys,

I successfully loaded from SD card the baseclock pre-built firmware, but I would like to test the overclock versions too.

How can this be done?

I have tried copying the overclocked files to an sd card and inserting into the LibreSDR, but the LibreSDR does not boot now with SD Card. It will only boot without SD Card plugged in.

I had thought I could copy the pluto.frm file, but they don't exist in the pre-built folders.

*** Second cheeky question, how do we expand the frequency range? I tried the same ssh commands as original pluto, but it didn't work.

PS. I am making a tutorial video for this product and your firmware, so it would be awesome to get an early response.

Thanks, Matt (Tech Minds on YT)

TechMindsYT commented 6 months ago

I updated the firmware using one of the libre.frm files linked in one of these issues and now the frequency expansion works perfectly, weird!

However, I would still like to know the proper way to change between base and overclocked firmware? If someone could let me know that would be awesome. Thanks Matt

hz12opensource commented 6 months ago

Hi Matt, thanks for testing this firmware! So far I've only tried to boot the firmware from SD card and not the internal NAND flash. So you will need to copy the overclocked firmware to SD card and make sure it boot from SD card.

To try different overclocking options, you just need to unzip the firmware packages to your SD card. There are different packages with different overclocks on that page. In my experience, my SDR runs pretty stable even with the highest clock posted there. Make sure to not boot from NAND flash if you have firmware previously installed to it.

To verify whether you have a correct overclock you can ssh into the SDR and cat /proc/cpuinfo and check the BogoMIPS (which should be half of clock frequency). If it fails to boot, taking a look at the serial console can be helpful.

If you are using the firmware built here the frequency range has already been expanded - no other steps are needed.

If you still encounter other problems I would recommend erase your current firmware on the NAND to ensure everything is from the SD card. I still need some time to test loading overclocked firmware to NAND (it should work if I rebuild the project from scratch, but I currently don't have time to test it).

Thanks and let me know if you have other questions.

TechMindsYT commented 6 months ago

Thanks for the reply! :-)

Could you tell me how to erase the current firmware on the NAND?

I am also playing with compiling my own firmware. Which I managed to do and got it loaded. Now for some reason it wont write again to the flash even though I am following the same steps.

Maybe an erase of the NAND is required. but how to do this? :-)

Thanks Matt

TechMindsYT commented 6 months ago

I think I am a little confused at the procedure to either run from SD Card only, or to write to flash so no SD Card is required. I am not sure at what point it writes to flash..

Also my libre.frm from self compiling comes out at around 16Mb, where as others that I have seen are around 11 Mb. Weird.

I will continue testing..

hz12opensource commented 6 months ago

The NAND flash is not written (still contains your old firmware) unless you explicitly run an update script or using the USB interface to update it.

I believe the NAND memory on the SDR is presented as /dev/mtd devices, and you can use relevant mtd commands to erase them.

The larger libre.frm is normal because this project enables compiler flags optimized for performance rather than size.

oborot-bolta commented 5 months ago

I updated the firmware using one of the libre.frm files linked in one of these issues and now the frequency expansion works perfectly, weird!

Where did you find libre.frm?

oddb1ts commented 2 months ago

Hi i know this may be an old post but how do you clear / erase the nand ? , want to boot from card but it will not let me , and i can not get ethernet , so need to boot from card to see if i can fix this ? any help would be great , many thanks.