March 2003 - coreboot - mail.coreboot.org

Newbie question
by Yann POUPET March 13, 2003

March 13, 2003

Hi, I've read a lot of posts, but haven't found what I'm looking for. I think I've understood that linuxBios is only there to be able to boot another Linux. Is it possible to boot the kernel directly in (from?) the bios then launching init, mouting HDs... I mean, is there a way to do as if there where no bios on a pc, decompressing the kernel just after power-on, and going on? I'd like to do this, and 8MBytes millenium doc could maybe help me. Actually I just need a fast booting system. Hope this is not too much stupid question...

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Price detail of linuxBios
by instec＠vsnl.net March 13, 2003

March 13, 2003

Hi, Attached pls find our company profile for your reference. We are developing an 'PVR' for which we need LinuxBios. Would like to know Price of the same. The 'PVR' contains x86 Processor. Our Client is from California , USA and has come to us through our US office. We expect the production to take place in Taiwan or Indonesia and estimated volume is 10K units per month Feel free to call me if you require any further info. Thanks V.Suresh Kumar Init systems II floor - Asoka plaza #483 , Dr.Nanjappa road Gandhi puram Coimbatore INDIA- 641 018 Ph : 91 422 223 6466 fax : 91 422 223 6755

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EPIA HOWTO
by Andrew Ip March 13, 2003

March 13, 2003

I have just checked in a HOWTO for EPIA. Thanks to Mark Wilkinson for providing us this document. -Andrew -- Andrew Ip Email: aip(a)cwlinux.com Tel: (852) 2542 2046 Fax: (852) 2542 2036 Mobile: (852) 9201 9866 Cwlinux Limited Unit 202B 2/F Lai Cheong Factory Building, 479-479A Castle Peak Road, Lai Chi Kok, Kowloon, Hong Kong. Tel: (852)2542 2046 Fax: (852)2542 2036 For public pgp key, please obtain it from http://www.keyserver.net/en.

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Ram initialization and small c.
by ebiederman＠lnxi.com March 13, 2003

March 13, 2003

Years ago when C was young and implementations were not readily available people compilers for subsets of C and called then small C compilers. Currently one of the greatest challenges in LinuxBIOS is to write ram initialization code. On x86 this is all done in 8 general purpose registers. And it takes about a 1000 lines of assembly per memory controller, to do a good job and handle all of the auto-configuration cases. Debugging the assembly is bad as frequently adding the debug code breaks the code we are trying to debug. Additionally there is no code reuse between the two binaries that make up LinuxBIOS as one is in C and the other in assembly. By this point I have enough practice I am good at writing the assembly code, that I think it hardly matters. But I have seen several proficient coders just grind to a halt when confronted with miles of assembly. So what I propose is to write a small C compiler for LinuxBIOS. Various reports from ages past put it at about a man-month of effort to get the first version going. And it may be better than that as there are a couple of places I can copy code from. tcc, lcc, gcc, and other small c projects. Up until this point all C compilers have had an assumption that you can have a stack. And most simple C compilers have kept none of the data structures needed to do inline and similar optimizations that are necessary when you don't have ram. So I think it is easiest to build up something very simple from scratch. That is the route I am going to try. No promises, but I should start a trial implementation soon. Ron. I am going to need to do a branch soon as I do the Hammer port and integrate a small C compiler. And I want to make some clean fixes and remove some of the backwards compatibility cruft, and the linuxbios 1.0 code base is an inappropriate place to target. It should be possible to roll in most of the improvements into the 1.0 codebase, but that will just increase the clutter of the codebase. Eric

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Re: [9fans] Off the shelves plan9-compatible desktop (fwd)
by Ronald G. Minnich March 13, 2003

March 13, 2003

could this be the long-awaited linuxbios laptop? I think most of those chips work ... ron ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 11:12:55 +0000 From: Derek Fawcus <dfawcus(a)cisco.com> Reply-To: 9fans(a)cse.psu.edu To: 9fans(a)cse.psu.edu Subject: Re: [9fans] Off the shelves plan9-compatible desktop On Fri, Feb 21, 2003 at 04:18:51PM +0900, okamoto(a)granite.cias.osakafu-u.ac.jp wrote: > As I got tired of debugging, I travelled into internet, and found > Lindows Mobile PC, which may be nice also to Plan 9. > However, I cann't figure it out whether it has 3 button mouse pad. > It looks like so... > 12.1" 1024x768 TFT > VIA C3 933 MHz Processor, <--- what's that? An x86 compatible processor made by VIA. It has poor FPU performance but reasonable integer performance. It's basically an i686 but with a semi implemented CMOV instruction. > VIA VT8606(Twister-T) + VT82C686B chipset, > Savage 4 AGP (which Russ's favurite chip?), > Realtek 10/100 LAN chip, > 20GB ATA HDD > Lindows3.0 OS <---- what's it? A Linux derived OS > 10.43x8.66x0.91" AND 2.9lbs (1.6kg)! > > any opinion? well if I was in the market for a laptop, I might well buy one... however, what I'd really like is a light enougth pad computer - all that I've seen so far are too heavy. DF

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SMA_SIZE and IDE_BOOT_DRIVE on pcchips810
by Alessio Sangalli March 13, 2003

March 13, 2003

Hi. I was reading the source code but I couldn't fully understand the meaning of SMA_SIZE and IDE_BOOT_DRIVE in the config file for pchipc 810lmr. SMA_SIZE should set the amount of framebuffer memory; but which are the possible values? How can I set the minimum, or 8MB, or 64MB? The following code from src/northsouthbridge/sis/730/ipl.S does the FB activation but I can't figure which values of SMA_SIZE correspond to the various video ram sizes. #ifdef HAVE_FRAMEBUFFER orb $SMA_SIZE, %al # enable SMA 8 MB for VGA #endif /* HAVE_FRAMEBUFFER */ #else /* !SIZE_ALL */ no_sdram: #ifdef HAVE_FRAMEBUFFER movb $0x63, %ah # enable DIMM 0 and movb $(SMA_SIZE + 0x01), %al # enable SMA 8 MB for VGA #else /* HAVE_FRAMEBUFFER */ movw $0x6301, %ax # enable DIMM 0 #endif /* HAVE_FRAMEBUFFER */ There are some sample config files where SMA_SIZE is set to 0x80, 0x90, 0xA0 - how much video memory is activated? Similar question for IDE_BOOT_DRIVE. On the sample config files that come with the code it's always set to '2', but the source (ide_fill_inbuf.c) would suggest me /dev/hda is '0' - but I'm not sure. $ grep -r IDE_BOOT_DRIVE . ./src/rom/ide_fill_inbuf.c:#ifndef IDE_BOOT_DRIVE ./src/rom/ide_fill_inbuf.c:#define IDE_BOOT_DRIVE 0 ./src/rom/ide_fill_inbuf.c: ide_read_sector(IDE_BOOT_DRIVE, buffer, block_num, ./util/config/pcchips787.config:option IDE_BOOT_DRIVE=2 ./util/config/stpc.config:option IDE_BOOT_DRIVE=2 /dev/hda -> 0 /dev/hdb -> 1 /dev/hdc -> 2 /dev/hdd -> 3 Is it correct??? P.S. Is it possible to boot from a CDROM? bye bye thank you!!! as -- How to build a lirc receiver http://www.manoweb.com/alesan/lirc

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New to BIOS
by samp March 13, 2003

March 13, 2003

Hi I have a board of P3 low power processor with 815E chipset. Can I port linuxbios to it - regards -samp

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Problems compiling linuxbios for pcchips810
by Alessio Sangalli March 13, 2003

March 13, 2003

Hi, I've wrote a config file for pcchips 810 to let it boot from IDE. This is the config file. target rom mainboard pcchips/m810lmr cpu k7 option VIDEO_CONSOLE=1 option SERIAL_CONSOLE=1 option DEFAULT_CONSOLE_LOGLEVEL=6 option SERIAL_POST=1 option ENABLE_MII=1 option MUST_ENABLE_FLOPPY=1 option HAVE_FRAMEBUFFER=1 option SMA_SIZE=0x80 option BOOT_IDE=1 option IDE_BOOT_DRIVE=0 option ONE_TRACK=32 biosbase 0xffff0000 linux /usr/src/linux commandline root=/dev/hda1 console=ttyS0,115200 console=tty0 I use the NLBConfig.py script to generate the makefile etc: $ python2.2 NLBConfig.py myconfig ~/linuxbios/freebios/ the output contains few warnings, but it seems nothing special. I enter "rom" directory and I type make. I've tried to use both gcc296 on redhat 7.2 and gcc322 compiled directly from sources (it works very well); I get this error: [snip] rm -f linuxbios.a ar cr linuxbios.a crt0.o linuxbiosmain.o linuxpci.o newpci.o clog2.o printk.o serial_subr.o video_subr.o subr.o vsprintf.o memset.o memcpy.o memcmp.o malloc.o do_inflate.o delay.o compute_ip_checksum.o version.o keyboard.o mc146818rtc.o isa-dma.o i8259.o beep.o vga_load_regs.o font_8x16.o vga_set_mode.o vga_load_pcx.o ide.o boot.o linuxbios_table.o i386_subr.o params.o hardwaremain.o c_start.o pirq_routing.o c_start.o southbridge.o northbridge.o superio_sis_950.o nsuperio.o mainboard.o irq_tables.o keyboard.o cpuid.o microcode.o mtrr.o l2_cache.o cpufixup.o cpufixup.o gcc -nostdlib -r -o linuxbios_c.o c_start.o ide_fill_inbuf.o linuxbios.a /usr/local/gcc322/lib/gcc-lib/i686-pc-linux-gnu/3.2.2/libgcc.a perl -e 'foreach $var (split(" ", $ENV{VARIABLES})) { if ($ENV{$var} =~ m/^(0x[0-9a-fA-F]+|0[0-7]+|[0-9]+)$/) { print "$var = $ENV{$var};\n"; }}' > ldoptions gcc -nostdlib -nostartfiles -static -o linuxbios_c -T /home/alesan/linuxbios/freebios/src/config/linuxbios_c.ld linuxbios_c.o linuxbios_c.o: In function `mdelay': linuxbios_c.o(.text+0x9d3): undefined reference to `udelay' collect2: ld returned 1 exit status make: *** [linuxbios_c] Error 1 any suggestion? Linuxbios was checked out from the cvs yestarday. bye bye as -- How to build a lirc receiver http://www.manoweb.com/alesan/lirc

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SPD problem
by Charlie Song March 13, 2003

March 13, 2003

Hi all, I'm trying to use "scanspd" to read SPD. It works fine for some motherboards. But it read back 0s for other motherboards. Does that mean I cann't read SPD for some motherboard? Thanks, Charlie

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Re: New to linuxBIOS
by Ronald G. Minnich March 13, 2003

March 13, 2003

can you boot linux and run lspci? ron

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