After a lot of ‘frantic testing’, and help from the linux-arm-kernel mailing list, I now have 3.12-rc6 running on the DreamPlug, using the new/improved ‘device tree’..

Fedora release 18 (Spherical Cow)
Kernel 3.12.0-rc6 on an armv5tel (ttyS0)
………………….
# uname -a
Linux rgdreamplug 3.12.0-rc6 #1 PREEMPT Mon Oct 21 13:29:27 BST 2013 armv5tel armv5tel armv5tel GNU/Linux

My original error was in basing my efforts on an ‘old’ config from 3.11, which – as far as I could tell – worked and booted correctly, but was – as was pointed out – actually incorrect..

So..  I decided to scrub the existing config, and start again from scratch ( # make kirkwood_defconfig ) and then deselect / select options specifically for the DreamPlug.

If you want to try this, I have posted my 3.12-rc kernel .config at http://pastebin.com/Vr3Y7Gg3

Thanks are due to Jason Cooper at the linux-arm-kernel lists, for his invaluable help, in pointing out exactly where I was going wrong!

Robert Gadsdon.  October 21, 2013