DragonBoard 410c

The DragonBoard 410c is a development board based on the Qualcomm APQ8016E SoC. More information can be found on the 96Boards product page.

U-Boot can be used as a replacement for Qualcomm’s original Android bootloader (a fork of Little Kernel/LK). Like LK, it is installed directly into the aboot partition. Note that the U-Boot port used to be loaded as an Android boot image through LK. This is no longer the case, now U-Boot can replace LK entirely.

Installation

First, setup CROSS_COMPILE for aarch64. Then, build U-Boot for dragonboard410c:

$ export CROSS_COMPILE=<aarch64 toolchain prefix>
$ make qcom_dragonboard410c_defconfig
$ make

This will build u-boot.mbn in the configured output directory.

Although the DragonBoard 410c does not have secure boot set up by default, the firmware still expects firmware ELF images to be “signed”. This is handled automatically with mkmbn (see Qualcomm Image Signing for more details).

Then install the resulting u-boot.mbn to the aboot partition on your device, e.g. with fastboot flash aboot u-boot.mbn.

U-Boot should be running after a reboot (fastboot reboot).

Usage

Press Volume Down during boot to enter Fastboot mode.