December 2005 - coreboot - mail.coreboot.org

Re: [LinuxBIOS] BIOS Saver RD1
by Ken Fuchs June 5, 2007

June 5, 2007

> On Wed, Aug 03, 2005 at 11:59:20AM +0900, Jun OKAJIMA wrote: > > Probably, most guys here use BIOS Saver. > > And it works well? > > In mine, RD1 for PLCC gets not being writable suddenly. > > I mean, it seems writable but # flash_rom -v fails. > > I solved this problem by a quick hack. > > > > How about yours? You can write RD1 or W49F002U well? > > Any problem happen? Johnathan McDowell wrote: > Even after that it's sometimes a bit flakey and I have to erase, then > write it. I've put the board's original BIOS in the RD1 and am writing > to the SST 39SF020A instead, which works without problems. I've read posts about the RD1 that suggest its integrated flash device is low quality and it may take 10 or more flash attempts to get a good flash update to the RD1 flash device. As a result, many RD1 BIOS Savior users will flash the commercial BIOS image (or other known good BIOS image) into the RD1 integrated flash device as many times as needed to get an image that boots. Then use the original BIOS device to flash test BIOS image (usually LinuxBIOS images among this group), since the original BIOS device usually flashes OK on the first attempt. I've used the RD1 in the above fashion with great success on the Tyan S2885 mainboard. The same RD1 would not work on the nVidia CK8-04 CRB mainboard. I think the CK8-04 CRB requires a flash device that the RD1 does not support. However, the RD1 worked well as an "do nothing" adapter which allowed swapping the BIOS flash device between my flash burner and the mainboard without any wear to the mainboard's BIOS socket. BTW, my flash burner is an older Enhanced Willem Universal Programmer. I got mine for only $60 US over a year ago. I've seen it for less than $40 on eBay a few weeks ago. The newest model is going for about $50 US. It does a LinuxBIOS flash in about 5 minutes; not bad for a $60 burner. However, it does require changing DIP switches to match an image for each device it can program. Great for the amateur or professional with a small budget. > > BTW, a cable of your RD1 is not broken? > > I needed soldering to fix it. > Mine was fine out of the box. Mine cable and switch worked fine out of the box as well. Sincerely, Ken Fuchs <kfuchs(a)winternet.com> ami-mac-sun

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[LinuxBIOS] bus 0 dev 0 and fidvid change
by Lu, Yinghai April 4, 2006

April 4, 2006

Please check the issue 41, I make K8 MB can be compiled, and It include bus0/dev0 and fidvid change enhancement HT_CHAIN_UNITID_BASE Default is 1, and if it is 6, then amd8131 will be from 6, also if it is 0, will assume ht chain only have one HT device... HT_CHAIN_END_UNITID_BASE Default is 0x20 --- mean do not use that, if it is 0, the amd8111 will be dev0 SB_HT_CHAIN_UNITID_OFFSET_ONLY Default is 1, so if HT_CHAIN_UNITID_BASE!=1, will only offset unitid of SB CHAIN. K8_SB_HT_CHAIN_ON_BUS0 Deault is 0, if it is 1, will put sb chain on bus 0, even for S2885 sb ht is on link2, it will put on bus0. K8_SET_FIDVID in cache_as_ram_auto.c or auto.c Fidvid change to sync the fid on 4 way or more system with different cpu installed.... Put following sequence in your cache_as_ram_auto.c after ht is set. enable_fid_change(); enable_fid_change_on_sb(); init_fidvid_bsp(bsp_apicid); please check init_cpus.c and fidvid.c and amd8111_early_ctrl.c for detail.... YH

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[LinuxBIOS] tyan s2881 - partial success
by Ward Vandewege Jan. 19, 2006

Jan. 19, 2006

So, with some help from Yinghai today, I finally managed to make my own working LinuxBIOS image, and boot it on the s2881. Fantastic! It cut boot time roughly in half - and that's without doing any optimizing of the init startup sequence, which now takes up the bulk of the bootup time. Anyway. Once the system booted, I tested network access and a few other things, and everything seemed to work just fine. But 10 minutes later the machine was no longer pingable, and I didn't get any response on the serial console anymore either. I shut it down, and restarted with LinuxBIOS. At this point, it would not boot anymore - as you can see in the attached serial log, it just decides to restart its fallback image just after init starts, which then hangs the box. Any clues? This is the latest svn revision (2145), with Etherboot 5.4.1 + FILO to boot from the local SATA drive. I rebooted with the proprietary BIOS, which brought the box up just fine (after complaining that it had to reset the CMOS). It started re-syncing the software RAID array right after boot though, so maybe that is related to the linuxBIOS hang upon boot, which is right after the kernel starts the RAID devices? I won't be able to work more on the box for the next week or two (holidays...), but I thought I'd better signal this now. Thanks, Ward. -- Ward Vandewege <ward(a)fsf.org> Free Software Foundation - Senior System Administrator

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[LinuxBIOS] Anybody having success with EPIA 800? (was Re: EPIA halting after vt8601 init?)
by Hacen Aissaoui Jan. 11, 2006

Jan. 11, 2006

Hello, Sorry to come back on this old thread but I would greatly appreciate if anyone could update the info discussed in it. Is the SDRAM CAS latency parameter the only issue with EPIA 800 ? Does the newest version of LB adapt itself to different SDRAMs ? Finally, Al, you were talking about : "keeping track of what it takes to get this going on EPIA, so I can post it for others in the future, this will be good to know." Could you kindly share your tracks with the EPIA 800 ? Thanks Hacen ___________________________________________________________________________ Nouveau : téléphonez moins cher avec Yahoo! Messenger. Appelez le monde entier à partir de 0,012 /minute ! Téléchargez sur http://fr.messenger.yahoo.com

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[LinuxBIOS] any chance to get X fbdev driver to work ?
by Christian Sühs Jan. 9, 2006

Jan. 9, 2006

Hey, and Happy X-Mas for all For non working Bootsplash with vesafb and LinuxBios I use the Viafb from Epia2 patch Kernel 2.4.25. Now Bootsplash works, with a little trick in the bootsplash sources :D But I'm not able to bring up a XServer with fbdev as driver. The system hangs without any errors. It seems the problem is the viafb inside the Kernel. Unfortunatly, I have the same problem with orginal Bios. Furthermore, the X via driver does not work with the LinuxBios system. I get an VGA_Bios checksum failure. With original Bios it works. I have had a look on the X Via driver sources. The file called via_bios.c (search for checksum) It seems the routine looks on 0xc0000 for a valid vga_bios, all other checks before are verified as true. Only the last check fails. I have tried to start X without Bios Callbacks, but fail. Is there any solution. It should be a valid bios on 0xc0000, the checksum routine is a loop about 65536 bytes. the result must be zero. As I create the vga bios, I have fill up the rest with OO to 65536. Is that the problem? Should I fill up with FF? chris

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[LinuxBIOS] Public request for a LinuxBIOS for VMware
by Borg No. One Jan. 8, 2006

Jan. 8, 2006

Hi. 1.) Is there someone who + already built a LinuxBIOS/OpenBIOS for VMware? + is interested in building a LinuxBIOS/OpenBIOS for VMware? then please let the LinuxBIOS/OpenBIOS community and me know about your work. 2.) If you think: "How to use 3rd party / modified BIOS in VMware" after reading the question(s) above, then you should check following links: http://www.vmware.com/community/message.jspa?messageID=103265#103265 http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?threadID=28149&tstart=0 http://www.wimsbios.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=33730& http://vmware.itst.org/viewtopic.php?p=10881 http://www.google.de/search?q=bios440 -- DSL-Aktion wegen gro�er Nachfrage bis 28.2.2006 verl�ngert: GMX DSL-Flatrate 1 Jahr kostenlos* http://www.gmx.net/de/go/dsl

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[LinuxBIOS] x86_64: calibrate_delay_direct and apic id lift for BSP
by Yinghai Lu Jan. 5, 2006

Jan. 5, 2006

andi, I tried to lift apic id in LinuxBIOS for all cpus after 0x10. When using MB with AMD8111, the jiffies was not moving. So it is locked at calibrate_delay_direct... but MB with Nvidia ck804, jiffies is moving. If I don't change BSP apic id ( keep it to 0), It changes.... I have no idea how the jiffies changes, there is another thread change it....? YH Memory: 508000k/524288k available (3146k kernel code, 15900k reserved, 1160k data, 296k init) calibrate_delay_direct i=0 calibrate_delay_direct start_jiffies=fffedb08 calibrate_delay_direct 1 jiffies=fffedb08 calibrate_delay_direct 1 jiffies=fffedb08 calibrate_delay_direct 1 jiffies=fffedb08 calibrate_delay_direct 1 jiffies=fffedb08

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[LinuxBIOS] Tyan Tiger 100 S1832
by Mark Longridge Jan. 3, 2006

Jan. 3, 2006

Hi folks, I've heard interesting things about linux bios so I figured I'd ask about my motherboard. I have a Tyan Tiger 100 S1832 board with two P3 550 cpus. Some specs: ·Intel 440BX AGPset. ·Intel PIIX4e controller. ·National 309 Super I/O chipset. Guess it's pretty old but I'd still like to try to put a linux bios on it. I have a pdf of the manual so if there's any other info needed please let me know. Thanks, Mark

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[LinuxBIOS] I855 raminit.c hang up
by Daniel Toussaint Dec. 29, 2005

Dec. 29, 2005

Hi, I have a board with an I852/ICH4 chipset (lspci output attached). i am trying to get something up and running based on the digitallogic/adl855pc board. During memory initialization , in northbridge/intel/i855pm/raminit.c the system hangs up in do_ram_command() when executing read32(dword) , where dword is 0x0000 Ram Enable 3 P:10 R:11 R:00000000 Is this a known problem ? Any tips ? If not, I will just keep on trying to find out what is wrong, but given my limited knowledge/experience with initialization of memory controllers, it may take me a long time. Thanks, ------> lspci <---------- 0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82852/82855 GM/GME/PM/GMV Processor to I/O Controller (rev 02) 0000:00:00.1 System peripheral: Intel Corporation 82852/82855 GM/GME/PM/GMV Processor to I/O Controller (rev 02) 0000:00:00.3 System peripheral: Intel Corporation 82852/82855 GM/GME/PM/GMV Processor to I/O Controller (rev 02) 0000:00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 82852/855GM Integrated Graphics Device (rev 02) 0000:00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation 82852/855GM Integrated Graphics Device (rev 02) 0000:00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 02) 0000:00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 02) 0000:00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 02) 0000:00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-M) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 02) 0000:00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev 82) 0000:00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL (ICH4/ICH4-L) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 02) 0000:00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801DB (ICH4) IDE Controller (rev 02) 0000:00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) SMBus Controller (rev 02) 0000:00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 02) 0000:01:08.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB PRO/100 VE (CNR) Ethernet Controller (rev 82)

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[LinuxBIOS] GRUB vs LinuxBIOS question
by Svante Signell Dec. 29, 2005

Dec. 29, 2005

Hi, I'm currently reading the mailing list archives on GRUB V2 and LinuxBIOS development. Can somebody please enlighten me on the interfaces between the two development projects. In an ideal world one should have open source, or preferably free software solutions, for the BIOS code too. Are there any overlaps in functionality that could be synchronised between the groups? Is anything tutorial-like written explaining the different functionality of the (Linux)BIOS (CPU, memory, peripheral initialisation, etc) and GRUB (kernel loading, transfer of control to kernel etc). Thanks, -- Svante Signell <svante.signell(a)telia.com>

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