Re: [LinuxBIOS] BIOS Saver RD1
by Ken Fuchs
> 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
11 years, 7 months
[LinuxBIOS] LinuxBIOS Debian package.
by Uwe Hermann
Hi,
being a Debian developer I wondered wether it would make sense to create
one or more Debian packages for LinuxBIOS. It seems there are no
packages available at the moment - is this correct?
I'm not sure it makes sense to have the src/* and targets/* stuff
packaged (maybe it does), but some things would be nice, I guess.
For example (quick draft):
linuxbios - metapackage which draws in all/most other packages
linuxbios-doc - documentation
linuxbios-utils - standalone utilities, e.g. romcc, flashrom, ...
Maybe also something like linuxbios-src which contains the rest, and
which can be used to compile images(?)
Anyways, let me know if that makes sense or whether there are
problems (e.g. if you'd HAVE TO recompile romcc/flashrom/whatever every
time on your own, it doesn't make sense to package it)...
Cheers, Uwe.
--
Uwe Hermann
http://www.hermann-uwe.de
http://www.it-services-uh.de | http://www.crazy-hacks.org
http://www.holsham-traders.de | http://www.unmaintained-free-software.org
12 years, 1 month
Re: [LinuxBIOS] selection of compression algorithm
by Carl-Daniel Hailfinger
yhlu wrote:
> then how about the lines for 7z uncompress code?
>
> YH
Working on it. 7z decompressor is really small (8 kb compiled on
i386) and written in ISO C (1884 lines of code), but compressor is
big and written in C++.
Does it still make sense to try to use 7z?
How much RAM is the decompressor allowed to use?
Regards,
Carl-Daniel
--
http://www.hailfinger.org/
12 years, 2 months
[LinuxBIOS] LinuxBIOS on ASUS P2B-L
by Don Waugaman
Hi all,
I'm working on putting LinuxBIOS on an old ASUS P2B-L that I'd like to
convert into an "instant-on" server for home use. It has an Intel 440BX
Host Bridge with Intel PIIX4e hard disk controller, and a Winbond
W83977TF SuperIO chip. I downloaded the manuals for these various
chips, so I think I might have a shot at getting them working correctly
as long as I can get some debug output on the serial port.
Since this will be a server, I don't need any video support, though I'd
like to keep the card in the machine uninitialized for when I have to
boot the factory BIOS. I've configured grub and the kernel to use the
serial port as the console, which works OK. My plan is to use FILO as
the LinuxBIOS payload.
I've installed a BIOS Savior in the machine and flashed it with another
copy of the factory BIOS, which works OK, so (barring checks in the
utility's code) I should be able to use the ASUS AFLASH program rather
than flashrom.
First, I tried to build a FILO payload with serial console only and
USE_GRUB=1, which didn't work - it looked like it was still trying to
use the VGA console for some functions. It worked OK when I commented
out the USE_GRUB line, but I'd still like to try the former
configuration - any FILO experts have any tips on how to squash the VGA
functions once and for all?
Then I grabbed the SVN trees for both v1 and v2. I copied the
bitworks/ims mainboard and target directories, as they seemed to be
using the 440bx code, and I'm slogging through changing the various
bitworks & ims entries in the code to asus & p2bl entries. So far, so
good, though I feel somewhat like I'm in a maze of twisty little
passages, all alike.
My main question is: The W83977TF has support under v1, but not v2 -
any tips on porting from one to the other? Also, once I have the
superIO initialization code installed, is there some way to get some
kind of debug output before RAM initialization? I'm not sure where to
put my own debugging output into the code - just a "hello, I'm here" is
all I need for starters. I'd be happy for pointers to some docs which
might answer some of these questions - I perused some of what I could
find in the SVN tree and wiki, but ended up just trying to jump right in
instead.
Another big question would be - should I continue ahead with v2, or go
back to v1? I noticed that v1 had the 440bx support as well, but it
looked like v2's configuration setup was a lot easier to deal with, so I
started there. Would it be worth it to learn how v1 does things for
this project?
The other outstanding issue coming down the pike is that the machine has
all ECC RAM. Is ECC supported by v1 or v2, and if not by either, which
would make it easiest to add support? I'm assuming v2, but I'll try v1
if that would be easier.
Many thanks,
Don
12 years, 3 months
[LinuxBIOS] VGA bring up
by rohit.venkatachalam＠wipro.com
Hi,
I have got LinuxBIOS running on my system. I have got serial console
output. I am trying to get the display(VGA) working. However, from the
serial output, I see something like -
0000:4002 ILLEGAL EXTENDED X86 OPCODE
halt_sys:/home/rohit/LinuxBIOSv2/src/devices/emulator/x86emu/ops2.c line
60
and the VGA display does not start. The execution of LinuxBIOS continues
beyond this point but no VGA display. What could be the problem? Someone
please reply ASAP.
Regards ,
Rohit.
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12 years, 3 months
[LinuxBIOS] Geode GX1/5530: How to forward SMI to a regular IRQ
by Juergen Beisert
Hi all,
I try to write a native sound driver for the Geode GX1/5530a Companion chip.
Problem here: The sound chip only generates SMI. Does anyone knows a trick or
a chipset switch that let me forward this SMI to a regular IRQ?
Its too ugly to use a polling loop.... ;-)
Regards,
Juergen
12 years, 4 months
[LinuxBIOS] License clarification, round 1
by Uwe Hermann
Hi all,
this will probably make me very unpopular around here, but oh well... ;)
I've started looking at _all_ files in svn and checking their respective
license to see if it's GPL'd or at least has another Free Software license.
Also, all such licenses must be GPL compatible, too, AFAIK (but I'm no
lawyer).
This is important for a) the Debian package, which must meet the DSFG
(Debian Free Software Guidelines), see
http://www.us.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines
and b) for the legal status of the LinuxBIOS project itself, as
any non-free-software/non-gpl-compatible code in the repository would
probably be illegal to distribute (depending on the exact license
terms), may cause all kinds of other legal hassle and just simply
compromise the whole idea of the project - to have a _free_ implementation.
So here I am, reading through all files, taking notes which of them
are not GPL'd. Please check the list and clarify the exact license
status of the files, e.g. by adding a GPL header similar to this one below:
/*
* Copyright (C) 200x Author Name <email(a)example.com>
*
* This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
* it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
* the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
* (at your option) any later version.
*
* This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
* but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
* MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
* GNU General Public License for more details.
*
* You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
* along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
* Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA
*/
(or at least a tiny note saying "this file is copyright 200x John Doe and
is licensed under the GPL)...
I'm happy to provide patches which add the above license header to all files,
but someone has to tell me who wrote the code, when, and which license applies
(if that's not obvious from the code).
I noticed that many files do not have any license header at all (some don't
even say who the author is); such files have an unclear status and must be
considered non-free usually, so in cases where that's just an oversight,
please add a respective license note. If the file was taken from another
project, please add a note saying so, and mention the license of that project
in the file.
Assumption: All *.lb config files are GPL'd even though they don't have
the lengthy GPL header in them. Correct? I don't think it's necessary for
those files. The same is probably true for ChangeLog, NEWS, and
documentation/ChangeLog.cvsimport, etc.
The biggest problems I notices so far is the code from IBM and AMD, which says
things like "Copyright 2005 ADVANCED MICRO DEVICES, INC. All Rights Reserved"
or stuff like:
LICENSED MATERIAL - PROGRAM PROPERTY OF I B M
US Government Users Restricted Rights - Use, duplication or
disclosure restricted by GSA ADP Schedule Contract with
IBM Corp.
That alone (which no additional "this is GPL'd" text would make the code non-free and
GPL-incompatible, I guess. I hope this can be resolved or clarified somehow.
I also found some licenses which I simply don't know and cannot tell
right now if they're fine or not - that has to be checked at some point.
Anyways, here's the list of issues I noticed so far (haven't checked all the code, yet):
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
HOWTO/EPIA-M-howto: No license note.
documentation/Makefile: No license note.
documentation/RFC/*: No license note.
* Is that stuff used at all?
documentation/*.eps: No license note.
* I assume this is GPL'd as LinuxBIOS-AMD64.tex is GPL'd. Correct?
src/arch/i386/boot/acpi.c:
* Says among other things
"Copyright 2005 ADVANCED MICRO DEVICES, INC. All Rights Reserved."
which is bad as it means it's NOT GPL'd and you cannot use it for anything,
really. No explicit permissions means you have no rights according to
international copyright laws, AFAIK (but I'm no lawyer).
src/arch/i386/boot/boot.c: No license note.
src/arch/i386/boot/linuxbios_table.*: No license note.
src/arch/i386/boot/pirq_routing.c: No license note.
src/arch/i386/boot/tables.c:
* Says: 2006.1 yhlu add mptable cross 0x467 processing
2003-07 by SONE Takeshi
Ported from Etherboot to LinuxBIOS 2005-08 by Steve Magnani
Etherboot is GPL'd (mostly, some parts are BSD), so this is GPL'd, right?
src/arch/i386/include/*.h: No license note.
src/arch/i386/include/arch/acpi.h:
* Now this is totally confusing.
* written by Stefan Reinauer <stepan(a)openbios.org> (GPL'd?)
* (C) 2004 SUSE LINUX AG (license?)
* The ACPI table structs are based on the Linux kernel sources. (GPL'd!)
* ACPI FADT & FACS added by Nick Barker <nick.barker9(a)btinternet.com>
those parts (C) 2004 Nick Barker (license?)
* ACPI SRAT support added in 2005.9 by yhlu (license?)
* Copyright 2005 ADVANCED MICRO DEVICES, INC. All Rights Reserved.
---> Baaad...
src/arch/i386/include/arch/intel.h:
* Not sure what to make of this... It's not the GPL, it's not the BSD
license (or the MIT license), either. ((2))
Is this GPL compatible?
/* This software and ancillary information (herein called SOFTWARE )
called LinuxBIOS is made available under the terms described
here. The SOFTWARE has been approved for release with associated
LA-CC Number 00-34 . Unless otherwise indicated, this SOFTWARE has
been authored by an employee or employees of the University of
California, operator of the Los Alamos National Laboratory under
Contract No. W-7405-ENG-36 with the U.S. Department of Energy. The
U.S. Government has rights to use, reproduce, and distribute this
SOFTWARE. The public may copy, distribute, prepare derivative works
and publicly display this SOFTWARE without charge, provided that this
Notice and any statement of authorship are reproduced on all copies.
Neither the Government nor the University makes any warranty, express
or implied, or assumes any liability or responsibility for the use of
this SOFTWARE. If SOFTWARE is modified to produce derivative works,
such modified SOFTWARE should be clearly marked, so as not to confuse
it with the version available from LANL. */
/* Copyright 2000, Ron Minnich, Advanced Computing Lab, LANL
* rminnich(a)lanl.gov */
src/arch/i386/include/arch/*.h (except for the above ones): No license note.
src/arch/i386/include/arch/boot/boot.h: No license note.
src/arch/i386/include/arch/smp/*.h: No license note.
src/arch/i386/init/ldscript.lb:
* Says: Copyright (c) 1999 by Net Insight AB. All Rights Reserved.
Not good...
src/arch/i386/lib/printk_init.c:
* Copyright (C) 1991, 1992 Linus Torvalds
No explicit license note, but it's quite surely GPL ((1)).
src/arch/i386/lib/*: No license note.
src/arch/i386/llshell/readme.linuxbios: No license note.
* Probably GPL'd, as the file it documents (llshell.inc) is GPL'd.
src/arch/i386/smp/*: No license note.
src/arch/ppc/boot/*: No license note.
src/arch/ppc/include/ppc4xx.h:
* Strange non-standard header, not sure what to make of it.
This source code has been made available to you by IBM on an AS-IS
basis. Anyone receiving this source is licensed under IBM
copyrights to use it in any way he or she deems fit, including
copying it, modifying it, compiling it, and redistributing it either
with or without modifications. No license under IBM patents or
patent applications is to be implied by the copyright license.
Any user of this software should understand that IBM cannot provide
technical support for this software and will not be responsible for
any consequences resulting from the use of this software.
Any person who transfers this source code or any derivative work
must include the IBM copyright notice, this paragraph, and the
preceding two paragraphs in the transferred software.
COPYRIGHT I B M CORPORATION 1999
LICENSED MATERIAL - PROGRAM PROPERTY OF I B M
src/arch/ppc/include/ppc970.h:
COPYRIGHT I B M CORPORATION 2003
LICENSED MATERIAL - PROGRAM PROPERTY OF I B M
US Government Users Restricted Rights - Use, duplication or
disclosure restricted by GSA ADP Schedule Contract with
IBM Corp.
src/arch/ppc/include/*.* (except for the above ones): No license note.
src/arch/ppc/include/arch/*.h: No license note.
src/arch/ppc/include/arch/boot/*.h: No license note.
src/arch/ppc/init/ldscript.lb:
* No license, but some authors:
Written by Johan Rydberg, based on work by Daniel Kahlin.
Rewritten by Eric Biederman
Re-rewritten by Greg Watson for PPC
src/arch/ppc/init/ppc_main.c:
* No license, but an author:
Copyright (C) 2003 by Greg Watson, Los Alamos National Laboratory
gwatson(a)lanl.gov
src/arch/ppc/lib/cpu.c: No license note.
src/arch/ppc/lib/pci_dev.c: No license note.
src/arch/ppc/lib/pci_ppc_conf1_ops.c: No license note.
src/boot/hardwaremain.c: Same as ((2)).
src/config/LinuxBIOSDoc.config: No license note (GPL?).
src/config/doxyscript.base: No license note (GPL?).
src/config/linuxbios_ram.ld:
* Copyright (c) 1999 by Net Insight AB. All Rights Reserved.
--> Bad.
src/console/btext_console.c: No license note, but some authors:
* Benjamin Herrenschmidt <benh(a)kernel.crashing.org>
move to LinuxBIOS by LYH yhlu(a)tyan.com
src/console/font-8x16.c: Same as ((1)).
src/console/printk.c: Same as ((1)).
src/console/vga_console.c: No license note, but an author:
* modified from original freebios code
by Steve M. Gehlbach <steve(a)kesa.com>
src/console/vsprintf.c: Same as ((1)).
src/console/vtxprintf.c: Same as ((1)).
targets/buildtarget: No license note. The rest of target/ has no license, too,
but should be fine (mostly config files).
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
HTH, Uwe.
--
Uwe Hermann
http://www.hermann-uwe.de
http://www.it-services-uh.de | http://www.crazy-hacks.org
http://www.holsham-traders.de | http://www.unmaintained-free-software.org
12 years, 4 months
[LinuxBIOS] VGA Fonts
by steve yannalfo
Hello Everyone,
I have had very good success with LB but I am having trouble with the VGA fonts during boot but, the screen becomes readable when the kernel loads "setfont" in the init-scripts. (that uses ioctls etc.) Also, xdm loads fine. (Also, the display is cleaner sooner if I use FB in the kernel, but I loose output again during init-scripts, and then OK for login prompt.)
I have an on-board ATI M9, and have included the vgabios part in th LB image.
I have tried many sequences of writing to the VGA regs in vga_console.c->vga_hardware_fixup() including loading fonts & colormaps but, nothing I do there seems to affect the display output.
I know I am in that function ok... just, nothing to seems to work.
// sequencer
outw(0x0612,0x3C4 ); /* unlock ext regs */
mdelay(5);
outw(0x0700,0x3C4); /* reset ext sequence mode */
mdelay(5);
outw(0x0120,0x3C4); /* disable video */
mdelay(5);
setTextRegs(VgaTextRegs); /* initial register setup */
mdelay(5);
setTextCLUT(); /* load color lookup table */
mdelay(5);
loadFont(); /* load font */
mdelay(5);
setTextRegs(VgaTextRegs); /* reload registers */
mdelay(5);
outw(0x0100,0x3C4); /* re-enable video */
mdelay(5);
outb(0x63,0x3c2); /* MISC */
mdelay(50);
It is like the vga part of the bios has intentionally left out the fonts, and any writes to 0xa0000000 or the vga regs have no effect.
The vga bios is copied correctly:
rom address for PCI: 03:01.0 = fff80000
copying VGA ROM Image from 0xfff80000 to 0xc0000, 0xf000 bytes
entering emulator
halt_sys: file /work/bios/linuxbios/src/devices/emulator/x86emu/ops.c, line 4485
OK
thanks
steve
I know I am asking a lot...:-)
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12 years, 4 months
