OpenPandora: Booting, NAND layouts and general firmware fluff.

One of the common questions I get now and then on IRC (#OpenPandora on FreeNode) or email concerns how the OpenPandora booting and firmware is setup, what technologies are used in it’s setup and how we try and prevent things like accidental bricking and the like.

With this in mind I thought I would knock up a quick post detailing how these things are setup as a starting point to expand on.

I’ll start off with a technical overview of how the system boots and then detail how this will work for normal end users (and that includes ‘most’ developers).

There are 3 main sections to this post.

• Booting the OpenPandora: The ‘low level’ process.

Only of interest to hacker types .

• Booting the OpenPandora: End user booting and the boot menu.

Normal users who want to play with alternative firmware, boot there own firmware and such look here.

• The stock firmware NAND layout.

Want to know a little about how is the stock firmware organised on the NAND? What setup is used? etc. – read this.

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