July 2005 - coreboot - mail.coreboot.org

[LinuxBIOS] AMD board support
by Justin Cormack Aug. 17, 2005

Aug. 17, 2005

What has to be done to port to a new AMD board now? Its Nforce 4. Havent used linuxbios for a while as had to use Intel boards. Its Tyan S2865 http://www.tyan.com/products/html/tomcatk8e.html lspci is 00:00.0 Memory controller: nVidia Corporation CK804 Memory Controller (rev a3) 00:01.0 ISA bridge: nVidia Corporation: Unknown device 0050 (rev a3) 00:01.1 SMBus: nVidia Corporation CK804 SMBus (rev a2) 00:02.0 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation CK804 USB Controller (rev a2) 00:02.1 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation CK804 USB Controller (rev a3) 00:04.0 Multimedia audio controller: nVidia Corporation CK804 AC'97 Audio Controller (rev a2) 00:06.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation CK804 IDE (rev a2) 00:07.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation CK804 Serial ATA Controller (rev a3) 00:08.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation CK804 Serial ATA Controller (rev a3) 00:09.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation CK804 PCI Bridge (rev a2) 00:0a.0 Bridge: nVidia Corporation CK804 Ethernet Controller (rev a3) 00:0b.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation CK804 PCIE Bridge (rev a3) 00:0c.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation CK804 PCIE Bridge (rev a3) 00:0d.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation CK804 PCIE Bridge (rev a3) 00:0e.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation CK804 PCIE Bridge (rev a3) 00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] HyperTransport Technology Configuration 00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Address Map 00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM Controller 00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Miscellaneous Control 01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Rage XL (rev 27) 01:06.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): VIA Technologies, Inc. IEEE 1394 Host Controller (rev 80) 04:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5721 Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express (rev 11)

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[LinuxBIOS] Solaris
by Justin Cormack Aug. 6, 2005

Aug. 6, 2005

Has anyone looked at what it would take to get Solaris booting under Linuxbios on Opteron? If not I might dig around (there is a modified grub - I think that does some of the init work; one suspects that because of its heritage it is quite BIOS-unencumbered). justin

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[LinuxBIOS] First instruction in linuxbios
by Jorge Cardona Aug. 5, 2005

Aug. 5, 2005

Hi. I'm new in this, and i'm reading the source and i have a question, which one it's exactly the first instruction that the processor execute when the pc is booting?, in which file is it? I don't complete understand the relationship between a normal bios and the kernel, i think that the bios it's has to pass some data to the kernel, if that's true ¿how exactly is that data passed to the kernel? In linuxbios, how it's this issue handle? PD: sorry for my english Thanks -- Jorge Eduardo Cardona jorgeecardona(a)gmail.com ------------------------------------------------ Linux registered user #391186 Registered machine #291871 ------------------------------------------------

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[LinuxBIOS] Potential copyright issues with decompiling ACPI tables?
by Ken Fuchs Aug. 4, 2005

Aug. 4, 2005

I haven't spend much time working with ACPI tables, but there may be copyright issues with decompiling these on a COTS BIOS and using the result in LinuxBIOS. Does anyone agree there may be a copyright concern here? I don't think there is, but I'm not a copyright lawyer. Sincerely, Ken Fuchs <kfuchs(a)winternet.com>

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[LinuxBIOS] Re: EPIA-M status
by Doug Bell July 29, 2005

July 29, 2005

I'm new to LinuxBIOS. I seem to have problems out of the box (code from this week): ./buildtarget via/epia-m build_dir=via/epia-m/epia-m Trying to find one of TARGET on line 4: > loadoptions > ^ List of nearby tokens: ===> ERROR: Could not parse file via/epia-m/Config.lb:0 Suggestions? Thanks, dB

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Re: [LinuxBIOS] Re: EPIA-M status
by Ronald G. Minnich July 29, 2005

July 29, 2005

On Fri, 29 Jul 2005, Doug Bell wrote: > yes, I did svn co .... I just realized ... epia-m is still not a working target! I thought someone got it close, but I have not looked lately. ron

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RE: [LinuxBIOS] util/getpir & util/mptable [Was "A boot problem...."]
by Stephen.Kimball＠bench.com July 29, 2005

July 29, 2005

I think the words "make it dynamically" could be causing some confusion. I suspect YH doesn't mean you could run a getpir or mptable utility on Linux and get a good IRQ or MP table. I think YH means the mptable.c file will programtically build the mptable by looking for secondary busses. My experience has been that running utilities on Linux booted with a commercial BIOS does no good at all, because most BIOS's use ACPI tables. When ACPI tables are used, the get_pir utility will return an empty IRQ table, because all the IRQ table stuff is in the ACPI tables. You may be able to dump an mptable but it may also rely on ACPI stuff. So the best way to do it is manually like YH says. The IRQ table just needs the peer bus information and the MP table needs to match the bus configuration. Steve -----Original Message----- From: linuxbios-bounces(a)openbios.org [mailto:linuxbios-bounces@openbios.org] On Behalf Of yhlu Sent: Friday, July 29, 2005 12:25 PM To: Ronald G. Minnich Cc: Ken Fuchs; LinuxBIOS(a)openbios.org Subject: Re: [LinuxBIOS] util/getpir & util/mptable [Was "A boot problem...."] No, the irq table can be produced dynmaically as mptable.c the developer must change irqtable.c mptable.c manually to make it dynamically. YH On 7/29/05, Ronald G. Minnich <rminnich(a)lanl.gov> wrote: > > > On Fri, 29 Jul 2005, Stefan Reinauer wrote: > > > Also, on AMD K8 CPUs it needs to be modified due to the difference in > > breadth-first vs depth-first bus enumeration, resulting in different bus > > numbers. > > ah, somebody fix it please :-) > > ron > _______________________________________________ LinuxBIOS mailing list LinuxBIOS(a)openbios.org http://www.openbios.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxbios

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[LinuxBIOS] Is the MSI 694T Pro MS-6309 (v5.0) ATX mainboard supported?
by Marko Mäkelä July 29, 2005

July 29, 2005

Hi all, I have built a personal video recorder using VDR and vdr-softdevice plugin on a MSI 694T mainboard running a 900 MHz Celeron. I would like to speed up the boot process: the BIOS needs over 10 seconds before starting LILO. I need the following features: - ATX wakeup timer - nvram-wakeup needs a reboot for the changes to take effect - wake-on-LAN (for starting the computer by the remote control unit bundled with the DVB-T tuner card; see my hardware hack at http://www.iki.fi/~msmakela/electronics/worc5/) - PCI, AGP and IDE (USB is not needed) Here's the lspci output: 0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C693A/694x [Apollo PRO133x] (rev c4) 0000:00:01.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C598/694x [Apollo MVP3/Pro133x AGP] 0000:00:07.0 ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C686 [Apollo Super South] (rev 40) 0000:00:07.1 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT823x/A/C PIPC Bus Master IDE (rev 06) 0000:00:07.2 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 1a) 0000:00:07.3 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 1a) 0000:00:07.4 Bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C686 [Apollo Super ACPI] (rev 40) 0000:00:07.5 Multimedia audio controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C686 AC97 Audio Controller (rev 50) 0000:00:0e.0 Ethernet controller: 3Com Corporation 3c905C-TX/TX-M [Tornado] (rev 74) 0000:00:10.0 Multimedia video controller: Conexant Winfast TV2000 XP (rev 05) 0000:00:10.2 Multimedia controller: Conexant: Unknown device 8802 (rev 05) 0000:00:10.4 Multimedia controller: Conexant: Unknown device 8804 (rev 05) 0000:01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Matrox Graphics, Inc. MGA G400 AGP (rev 82) The superio chip is a VIA 686, identified by Linux as VP_IDE: VIA vt82c686b (rev 40) IDE UDMA100 controller on pci0000:00:07.1 ide0: BM-DMA at 0xff00-0xff07, BIOS settings: hda:DMA, hdb:DMA ide1: BM-DMA at 0xff08-0xff0f, BIOS settings: hdc:DMA, hdd:pio and ALSA device list: #0: VIA 82C686A/B rev50 with ICE1232 at 0xdc00, irq 18 The markings on the chip are VIA VT82C686B 0130CD TAIWAN 13C002600. The south bridge (next to the processor, I hope this is the correct terminology) is a VIA VT82C694T 0130CD TAIWAN 2IB0004361. The BIOS device is a PLCC chip with 9 pins on the long side and 7 pins on the short side. I can peel off the AMIBIOS label if needed. Here is some more information on this motherboard: http://www.msicomputer.com/product/detail_spec/694T_Pro.htm http://www.mainboard.cz/mb/msi/694TPRO.htm If you need any more information, please let me know. Marko

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Re: [LinuxBIOS] util/getpir & util/mptable [Was "A boot problem...."]
by Ken Fuchs July 29, 2005

July 29, 2005

> On Thu, 28 Jul 2005, Ken Fuchs wrote: > > Please note that some people consider running either util/getpir or > > util/mptable to be a waste of time. (I agree; Maybe these utilities > > could be fixed so they would be more useful on LinuxBIOS v2.) Ron Minnich wrote: > ?? Sorry, I worded the above paragraph far too strongly. I meant to say that booting a COTS BIOS & Linux and running util/getpir and util/mptable can be very useful in LinuxBIOS v2, but hand editing the results may be required. It would be nice, if util/getpir and util/mptable could be modified so hand editing the resultant irq_table.c and mptable.c would not be needed. This may not be very useful for experienced LinuxBIOS developers, but can save a lot of porting time for people who don't have as much LinuxBIOS or other BIOS experience. Sincerely, Ken Fuchs <kfuchs(a)winternet.com>

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Fwd: Re: [LinuxBIOS] Potential copyright issues with decompiling ACPI tables?
by Paul Millar July 29, 2005

July 29, 2005

I guess we can all claim that IANAL, but I've seen similar arguments with wine that might be useful. Reading the copyright section on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright there's a mention of the "idea-expression dichotomy". From wikipedia: "a copyright covers the expression of an idea, not the idea itself [...]" For this reason, simple header files (*.h) are normally not considered copyrightable. See, for example: http://www.kerneltraffic.org/wine/wn20010219_83.html which links to the Sega case: http://www.eff.org/pub/Legal/Cases/sega_v_accolade_977f2d1510_decision.html If the copyright notice is in the BIOS binary, it applies to that instantiation of the code. Simply copying the ACPI tables verbatim may be legal (c.f. Sega case summary above about "purely functional" code), but parsing the in-memory tables and writing them out to disk (which is what's happening here, right?) is legal. (IMHO, IANAL, ...) Cheers, Paul. On Thursday 28 Jul 2005 22:23, Ronald G. Minnich wrote: > On Thu, 28 Jul 2005, Ken Fuchs wrote: > > I haven't spend much time working with ACPI tables, but there may be > > copyright issues with decompiling these on a COTS BIOS and using the > > result in LinuxBIOS. Does anyone agree there may be a copyright > > concern here? I don't think there is, but I'm not a copyright lawyer. > > that's a good question. we don't know. On the one hand, ACPI describes > hardware, and the OSes read it all the time. Seems like public info. > > OTOH, there's a copyright notice in there. > > I don't know the answer.

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