coreboot February 2005

coreboot@coreboot.org

45 participants
64 discussions

Actual/operating CPU frequency (fwd)
by Ronald G. Minnich 23 Feb '05

23 Feb '05

An interesting question. AFAIK there is no general purpose way to get this out of the CPU, am I wrong on this? I figure you have to at least talk to the chipset and get some info ... ron ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2005 16:29:40 -0700 From: Patrick McCormick <pat(a)lanl.gov> To: Ronald G. Minnich <rminnich(a)lanl.gov> Subject: Actual/operating CPU frequency Hi Ron, Would you happen to have any source around (assembly is fine) that will return the actual clock speed that a processor (Intel and AMD) is running at? I have the start of some code but I'm having a tough time getting the details worked out. I know the BIOS has a 'ticker' with a known speed so I could then use the time step counter to eventually get to the cpu frequency but but I haven't found out exactly how to do this in several attempts. Any ideas? This code will eventually have to run under both Linux and Windows (ugh). Thanks, --Pat

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Embedded Linux
by Gin 22 Feb '05

22 Feb '05

Don't know if anyone has a good tool package in mind that I can use to develop an Embedded Linux. We want a linux that is just enough to run the flash_rom program+usb support and we hope it would be small enough so we can fit it into a Bios chip. It's all for the convenience of updating Bios in the future. As you image, we are closed to support Linuxbios officially in our products. gin

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yet another reason to use linuxbios in laptops I guess
by Amaury Jacquot 22 Feb '05

22 Feb '05

http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/02/21/193232&tid=137&tid=184&tid=1…

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Porting Linuxbios to Via P4m266A
by sherlock＠vsnl.com 22 Feb '05

22 Feb '05

Hi all I ve been lurking on this list for some time. Has linuxbios been ported to the Via p4m266A mobo? (vt8633, vt8235, IT8705) If not can i do it?. Basically i would like to boot from a usb thumb drive (transcend 512Mb). The problem is that the bios recognizes the usb only as a floppy and if it is a dos fat16 partition. This makes grub and lilo unusable (unless i waste 16 mb on a dos partition). I am able to use syslinux though. here is what lspci says 00:00.0 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc.: Unknown device 3148 00:01.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8633 [Apollo Pro266 AGP] 00:10.0 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. UHCI USB (rev 80) 00:10.1 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. UHCI USB (rev 80) 00:10.2 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. UHCI USB (rev 80) 00:10.3 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc.: Unknown device 3104 (rev 82) 00:11.0 ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc.: Unknown device 3177 00:11.1 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. Bus Master IDE (rev 06) 00:11.5 Multimedia audio controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. AC97 Audio Controller (rev 50) 00:12.0 Ethernet controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. Ethernet Controller (rev 74) 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: S3 Inc.: Unknown device 8d04 attached output of lspci -v Btw I am good with a solder iron and do some work with microntrollers pcs and assorted hardware. rgds jtd

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LinuxBios support for the ELAN SC520
by Robin Randhawa 22 Feb '05

22 Feb '05

Greetings List and Hi Ron! Ron, its been a while since I made on offlist enquiry about Linuxbios support for AMD's ELANSC520 microcontroller. Couldn't get my hands on the devel board hence the delay. Apologies for the same! I'll have the board by the weekend so I thought now would be a good time to get my perspective right. Here's the spill: I've been asked to get Linux 2.6.x up on a BIOS-less custom devel board built around this controller and would love to collaborate and get some help from this community. I would love to put up my experience if it would help others. But first, some pre-requisites. I have some degree of expertise with deeply embedded RTOS' such as eCos (did a port to a multicore board) and bootloaders such as RedBoot but have never ventured strictly into the Linux BSP domain, though I call myself a Linux power user (not in any way grandiose!) and have done a fair amount of Linux Device Driver work. After a bit of digging around, I've narrowed down my choice of bootloaders to telios' ALIOS and Linuxbios from you good people. Alios seems to support only the ELAN SC400 and I am not sure of the existing Linuxbios support for the ELAN SC520. Could someone please inform me if this microcontroller is currently supported ? My strategy, based on AMD's recommendations for the SC520 is to come up with bootstrap code which does the following (from scratch if I have no other option, but I'm hoping that Linuxbios will come to the rescue!) : 1. From the reset vector (which just 16Kb from the top of physical mem), jump to a more spacious area 2. Switch to protected mode 3. Bring up the DRAM 4. Copy a Linux elf image which is at some safe location in ROM to the DRAM 5. Jump to it Now while that may sound fine and dandy, I am plagued by very basic and fundamental questions which I will pop up as things move along. Since this micro is core compatible with a pentium, I intend using standard pentium GNU tools. For the moment, I would really appreciate pointers to experiences, documentation, tutorials et al. I could supply more info as needed. Thanks a tonne and keep up the good work! Cheers, Robin

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A my wits end.
by Justin Walsh 19 Feb '05

19 Feb '05

I'm old fashion, believing that True Users are End Users. Business/nonBusiness people (dotCom/dotOrg, or neither). The Ideal model I use is the mobile phone: Who really cares what drives it, as long s it works. I have two Integrated Development Environments, IDE's: 1. PDC VIP nc; Visual Prolog non commercial and, 2. Cincom VWnc; VisualWorks non commercial. The first is primarily Declarative (non procedural leaning toward procedural). The mindset is radical "close". The second primarily Procedural (non Declarative leaning toward declarative). The mindset is radical "open". I am stuck with a choice of which "one" to choose. Neither is making it easier for me. Background: Neither actually requires an Operating System at all, the earlier Borland and Digitalk (mid to late 80's) releases ran well on early DOS. From my experience both could have run just as well (if not better) on 64k bit CP/M. Since they are both true OO IDE's and can perform everything a modern computer should, then I don't see the OS as doing any more than provide what you describe so well in you opening statement in Linuxbios.org: Reinout Heek wrote: The most minimal Linux I heard of is the one being adapted to run instead of the bios (requires reflashing your bios) http://www.linuxbios.org/ Will boot in seconds In fact once my StV IDE has booted (DOS3.10) I can even delete c:\dos and the command.com. Both Cincom and PDC (owners of the above tools) have hitched their respective wagons to either Windows or Linux or both and End Users are being led a merry techno-political dance.; no insult intended. They now service only their Primary Users, who are nearly all committed to either Linux or Windows; one and all Programmers Secondary or End User are left wondering whether years of development are going to end up as junk. I am now faced with all the uncertainty which a technical "civil war" i.e "open v Close" or as in Gullivers Travels "Big-enders v Small-enders", presents. If there is anybody (with an open/closed mind), who can speak with me on the matter (soberly and Rationally), then: I would be delighted to hear from him/her,them. Regards Justin

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Re: Linuxbios and co...
by ebiederman＠lnxi.com 18 Feb '05

18 Feb '05

Guido Fiala <guido.fiala(a)dka-gmbh.de> writes: > Hallo Mr. Biederman, > > came to contact you reading your article in the Linuxjournal: > http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/4888 > > You mention that you managed to set up Linuxbios for 3 mainboards, was it a > big job or quite easy to do? The hard part is always the chipset port. In particular the memory controllers can be a pain. > Would really like to try it for to system i have at hands here: a Via-based > system and a Pentium-M based one (MB890 mainboard). > > Can you recommend some step-by-step procedure how to get it working? > Unfortunately the documentation at the linux/free/open-bios sites is not very > useful compared to a "classical" Howto ;-) Love to but I've been too busy porting to different systems. > I can not even decide which one is the way to go - linux-bios, free-bios or > open-bios! There is mailing-list-traffic in all these, but in none a > site-search even got me results on "MB890" or "855GME" chipsets etc. linuxbios is a subset of freebios that seems to equal the entire set. openbios for the most part runs on top of Linuxbios. > Maybe you can give me some hint if you are still involved? I am. If you need more of a hint hopefully someone else can do a better job of answering the questions. Eric

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RE: Refill Notification Ref: GE-99663054409128
by YhLu 18 Feb '05

18 Feb '05

CVS or maillist system? YH > -----Original Message----- > From: Ronald G. Minnich [mailto:rminnich@lanl.gov] > Sent: Thursday, February 17, 2005 8:49 PM > To: linuxbios(a)clustermatic.org > Subject: Re: Refill Notification Ref: GE-99663054409128 > > folks, we are getting ready to move linuxbios to a new > system, and hopefully more sophisticated spam-killer. Sorry > for the spam. > > ron > > _______________________________________________ > Linuxbios mailing list > Linuxbios(a)clustermatic.org > http://www.clustermatic.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxbios >

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Pentium-M on 855GM ?
by gfiala＠s.netic.de 18 Feb '05

18 Feb '05

Hallo, has somebody managed to get an Pentium-M based motherboard to run already? The motherboard is an ibase MB890 mini-itx one with the following chips: 82555GME (GMCH) (with DVI out if that makes anything harder than with CRT?) 82552GM (MCH) 82801DB (ICH4) 82801DBM (ICH4-M) DDR DIMMs Winbond W83627HF cpu-socket is FCBGA 478 Pentium-M (Dothan) 1.6 GHz More information required? --- Somewhere i read, that hot-swapping the Bios-chip is not recommended, instead a tiny "dual-socket" extension-board is plugged into the MoBo's Bios-socket (PLCC?) which has a jumper on it to enable one or the other chip of the two. Where can i get one? Where to find the correct pin-compatible DOC for use with linuxbios (if required), alternatives? BTW, the article/document on the linuxbios-homepage only mentions 32pin DIP ZIF sockets variants, does it work for others at all ?-) --- Are there some current reliable numbers on what booting speed can be achieved using linuxbios (which is critical for my application) ?- the "rumour" numbers vary from 3 seconds to 20 seconds for same hardware ... Guido

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Re: Refill Notification Ref: GE-99663054409128
by Ronald G. Minnich 17 Feb '05

17 Feb '05

folks, we are getting ready to move linuxbios to a new system, and hopefully more sophisticated spam-killer. Sorry for the spam. ron

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coreboot February 2005