Getting linux on internal NAND FLASH (WM8650)

[Franco Palombo]

After being able to build and boot linux 4.14 (5.15 and 6.1 too, but with segmentation faults while booted), I started to wonder if there was any chance of getting rid of the useless android 2.2 that comes preinstalled with this little notebook, and get something on the NAND flash a little bit more useful.

For the moment, I haven't looked much on how to get the NAND to be detected on linux. I've been reading some of the old threads on this group, where Tony was playing with his own self-made driver, and I also know that Alexey has also got some work on the NAND driver, but that's pretty much it. There is also a branch on the development github that is labeled "testing-nand", which I haven't looked into yet. In any case, if the drivers made by Alexey and Tony don't work, I would like start from the "official" wonder media source (if anyone has a copy, I would appreciate you sharing the link) to see what can I learn from it, and then keep going. 

[Alexey Charkov]

On Mon, 14 Aug 2023 at 05:45, Franco Palombo <ffpp...@hotmail.com> wrote:

There is also a branch on the development github that is labeled "testing-nand", which I haven't looked into yet. In any case, if the drivers made by Alexey and Tony don't work, I would like start from the "official" wonder media source (if anyone has a copy, I would appreciate you sharing the link) to see what can I learn from it, and then keep going. 

If I remember correctly, Tony’s driver worked on WM8850. Structurally it was a massively cleaned up version of WonderMedia’s one, adapted for device trees and clocks.

WM8650 might have different page sizes and/or OOB layout and/or ECC algorithm, but otherwise should work similarly with limited modifications. The NAND controller is a pretty self contained device on these machines.

Here’s one of the tarballs I have with WonderMedia sources for WM8650:

https://1drv.ms/u/s!AtjMgRRkADySrReetoEhg8lr3Kjh

There is also one with u-boot source and a differently dated kernel tarball (also from 2011). Please ping me if those are of any interest.

Best,

Alexey