README: Move to using markdown as the format

(From meta-yocto rev: d397ed754c04b8ef02b01ae4b439610ede12d9d9)

Signed-off-by: Richard Purdie <richard.purdie@linuxfoundation.org>

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+                  Yocto Project Hardware Reference BSPs README
+                  ============================================
+
+This file gives details about using the Yocto Project hardware reference BSPs.
+The machines supported can be seen in the conf/machine/ directory and are listed 
+below. There is one per supported hardware architecture and these are primarily
+used to validate that the Yocto Project works on the hardware arctectures of 
+those machines.
+
+If you are in doubt about using Poky/OpenEmbedded/Yocto Project with your hardware, 
+consult the documentation for your board/device.
+
+Support for additional devices is normally added by adding BSP layers to your 
+configuration. For more information please see the Yocto Board Support Package 
+(BSP) Developer's Guide - documentation source is in documentation/bspguide or 
+download the PDF from:
+
+   http://yoctoproject.org/documentation
+
+Note that these reference BSPs use the linux-yocto kernel and in general don't
+pull in binary module support for the platforms. This means some device functionality
+may be limited compared to a 'full' BSP which may be available.
+
+
+Hardware Reference Boards
+=========================
+
+The following boards are supported by the meta-yocto-bsp layer:
+
+  * Texas Instruments Beaglebone (beaglebone-yocto)
+  * Ubiquiti Networks EdgeRouter Lite (edgerouter)
+  * General IA platforms (genericx86 and genericx86-64)
+
+For more information see the board's section below. The appropriate MACHINE
+variable value corresponding to the board is given in brackets.
+
+Reference Board Maintenance
+===========================
+
+Send pull requests, patches, comments or questions about meta-yocto-bsps to poky@yoctoproject.org
+
+Maintainers: Kevin Hao <kexin.hao@windriver.com>
+             Bruce Ashfield <bruce.ashfield@windriver.com>
+
+Consumer Devices
+================
+
+The following consumer devices are supported by the meta-yocto-bsp layer:
+
+  * Intel x86 based PCs and devices (genericx86)
+  * Ubiquiti Networks EdgeRouter Lite (edgerouter)
+
+For more information see the device's section below. The appropriate MACHINE
+variable value corresponding to the device is given in brackets.
+
+
+
+                      Specific Hardware Documentation
+                      ===============================
+
+
+Intel x86 based PCs and devices (genericx86*)
+=============================================
+
+The genericx86 and genericx86-64 MACHINE are tested on the following platforms:
+
+Intel Xeon/Core i-Series:
+  + Intel NUC5 Series - ix-52xx Series SOC (Broadwell)
+  + Intel NUC6 Series - ix-62xx Series SOC (Skylake)
+  + Intel Shumway Xeon Server
+
+Intel Atom platforms:
+  + MinnowBoard MAX - E3825 SOC (Bay Trail)
+  + MinnowBoard MAX - Turbot (ADI Engineering) - E3826 SOC (Bay Trail)
+    - These boards can be either 32bot or 64bit modes depending on firmware
+    - See minnowboard.org for details 
+  + Intel Braswell SOC
+
+and is likely to work on many unlisted Atom/Core/Xeon based devices. The MACHINE
+type supports ethernet, wifi, sound, and Intel/vesa graphics by default in
+addition to common PC input devices, busses, and so on.
+
+Depending on the device, it can boot from a traditional hard-disk, a USB device,
+or over the network. Writing generated images to physical media is
+straightforward with a caveat for USB devices. The following examples assume the
+target boot device is /dev/sdb, be sure to verify this and use the correct
+device as the following commands are run as root and are not reversable.
+
+USB Device:
+  1. Build a live image. This image type consists of a simple filesystem
+     without a partition table, which is suitable for USB keys, and with the
+     default setup for the genericx86 machine, this image type is built
+     automatically for any image you build. For example:
+
+     $ bitbake core-image-minimal
+
+  2. Use the "dd" utility to write the image to the raw block device. For
+     example:
+
+     # dd if=core-image-minimal-genericx86.hddimg of=/dev/sdb
+
+  If the device fails to boot with "Boot error" displayed, or apparently
+  stops just after the SYSLINUX version banner, it is likely the BIOS cannot
+  understand the physical layout of the disk (or rather it expects a
+  particular layout and cannot handle anything else). There are two possible
+  solutions to this problem:
+
+  1. Change the BIOS USB Device setting to HDD mode. The label will vary by
+     device, but the idea is to force BIOS to read the Cylinder/Head/Sector
+     geometry from the device.
+
+  2. Use a ".wic" image with an EFI partition
+
+     a) With a default grub-efi bootloader:
+     # dd if=core-image-minimal-genericx86-64.wic of=/dev/sdb
+
+     b) Use systemd-boot instead
+     - Build an image with EFI_PROVIDER="systemd-boot" then use the above
+       dd command to write the image to a USB stick.
+
+
+Texas Instruments Beaglebone (beaglebone-yocto)
+===============================================
+
+The Beaglebone is an ARM Cortex-A8 development board with USB, Ethernet, 2D/3D
+accelerated graphics, audio, serial, JTAG, and SD/MMC. The Black adds a faster
+CPU, more RAM, eMMC flash and a micro HDMI port. The beaglebone MACHINE is
+tested on the following platforms:
+
+  o Beaglebone Black A6
+  o Beaglebone A6 (the original "White" model)
+
+The Beaglebone Black has eMMC, while the White does not. Pressing the USER/BOOT
+button when powering on will temporarily change the boot order. But for the sake
+of simplicity, these instructions assume you have erased the eMMC on the Black,
+so its boot behavior matches that of the White and boots off of SD card. To do
+this, issue the following commands from the u-boot prompt:
+
+    # mmc dev 1
+    # mmc erase 0 512
+
+To further tailor these instructions for your board, please refer to the
+documentation at http://www.beagleboard.org/bone and http://www.beagleboard.org/black
+
+From a Linux system with access to the image files perform the following steps:
+
+  1. Build an image. For example:
+
+     $ bitbake core-image-minimal
+
+  2. Use the "dd" utility to write the image to the SD card. For example:
+
+     # dd if=core-image-minimal-beaglebone-yocto.wic of=/dev/sdb
+
+  3. Insert the SD card into the Beaglebone and boot the board.
+
+Ubiquiti Networks EdgeRouter Lite (edgerouter)
+==============================================
+
+The EdgeRouter Lite is part of the EdgeMax series. It is a MIPS64 router
+(based on the Cavium Octeon processor) with 512MB of RAM, which uses an
+internal USB pendrive for storage.
+
+Setup instructions
+------------------
+
+You will need the following:
+* RJ45 -> serial ("rollover") cable connected from your PC to the CONSOLE
+  port on the device
+* Ethernet connected to the first ethernet port on the board
+
+If using NFS as part of the setup process, you will also need:
+* NFS root setup on your workstation
+* TFTP server installed on your workstation (if fetching the kernel from
+  TFTP, see below).
+
+--- Preparation ---
+
+Build an image (e.g. core-image-minimal) using "edgerouter" as the MACHINE.
+In the following instruction it is based on core-image-minimal. Another target
+may be similiar with it.
+
+--- Booting from NFS root / kernel via TFTP ---
+
+Load the kernel, and boot the system as follows:
+
+ 1. Get the kernel (vmlinux) file from the tmp/deploy/images/edgerouter
+    directory, and make them available on your TFTP server.
+
+ 2. Connect the board's first serial port to your workstation and then start up
+    your favourite serial terminal so that you will be able to interact with
+    the serial console. If you don't have a favourite, picocom is suggested:
+
+  $ picocom /dev/ttyS0 -b 115200
+
+ 3. Power up or reset the board and press a key on the terminal when prompted
+    to get to the U-Boot command line
+
+ 4. Set up the environment in U-Boot:
+
+ => setenv ipaddr <board ip>
+ => setenv serverip <tftp server ip>
+
+ 5. Download the kernel and boot:
+
+ => tftp tftp $loadaddr vmlinux
+ => bootoctlinux $loadaddr coremask=0x3 root=/dev/nfs rw nfsroot=<nfsroot ip>:<rootfs path> ip=<board ip>:<server ip>:<gateway ip>:<netmask>:edgerouter:eth0:off mtdparts=phys_mapped_flash:512k(boot0),512k(boot1),64k@3072k(eeprom)
+
+--- Booting from USB disk ---
+
+To boot from the USB disk, you either need to remove it from the edgerouter
+box and populate it from another computer, or use a previously booted NFS
+image and populate from the edgerouter itself.
+
+Type 1: Use partitioned image
+-----------------------------
+
+Steps:
+
+ 1. Remove the USB disk from the edgerouter and insert it into a computer
+    that has access to your build artifacts.
+
+ 2. Flash the image.
+
+    # dd if=core-image-minimal-edgerouter.wic of=/dev/sdb
+
+ 3. Insert USB disk into the edgerouter and boot it.
+
+Type 2: NFS
+-----------
+
+Note: If you place the kernel on the ext3 partition, you must re-create the
+      ext3 filesystem, since the factory u-boot can only handle 128 byte inodes and
+      cannot read the partition otherwise.
+
+      These boot instructions assume that you have recreated the ext3 filesystem with
+      128 byte inodes, you have an updated uboot or you are running and image capable
+      of making the filesystem on the board itself.
+
+
+ 1. Boot from NFS root
+
+ 2. Mount the USB disk partition 2 and then extract the contents of
+    tmp/deploy/core-image-XXXX.tar.bz2 into it.
+
+    Before starting, copy core-image-minimal-xxx.tar.bz2 and vmlinux into
+    rootfs path on your workstation.
+
+    and then,
+  
+      # mount /dev/sda2 /media/sda2
+      # tar -xvjpf core-image-minimal-XXX.tar.bz2 -C /media/sda2
+      # cp vmlinux /media/sda2/boot/vmlinux
+      # umount /media/sda2
+      # reboot
+
+ 3. Reboot the board and press a key on the terminal when prompted to get to the U-Boot
+    command line:
+
+    # reboot
+
+ 4. Load the kernel and boot:
+
+      => ext2load usb 0:2 $loadaddr boot/vmlinux
+      => bootoctlinux $loadaddr coremask=0x3 root=/dev/sda2 rw rootwait mtdparts=phys_mapped_flash:512k(boot0),512k(boot1),64k@3072k(eeprom)