I'm very new to this concept of bootloaders for embedded processors so bare with me. The answer that best aligns to your question is "trying to initialize the processor prior to running to application code".
Some of the critical tasks I would like my bootloader to cover are...
1) Initialize critical parts of the processor (oscillators, clock branches, peripheral enables, etc..)
2) Initialize a few peripherals like UART to provide some useful "readable" output during this process
Some additional "would be nice" features I would like to do are...
1) Load an application from a SD card
2) Parse over the application executable for validity purposes
Some of the critical tasks I would like my bootloader to cover are... 1) Initialize critical parts of the processor (oscillators, clock branches, peripheral enables, etc..) 2) Initialize a few peripherals like UART to provide some useful "readable" output during this process
Some additional "would be nice" features I would like to do are... 1) Load an application from a SD card 2) Parse over the application executable for validity purposes