coreboot March 2007

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118 participants
226 discussions

[LinuxBIOS] Xvesa on LinuxBIOS
by Alan Carvalho de Assis 01 Mar '07

01 Mar '07

Hi Ron, 2007/2/26, ron minnich <rminnich(a)gmail.com>: > Alan, this is an interesting idea. yes, I think it is a good idea too although some friends said me it is a crazy idea :) >I wonder how I would replicate your > setup in order to try to replicate your problem? A way to you replicate this problem is: start LinuxBIOS with video support (from original VGA ROM BIOS), then run kdrive (Xvesa) or even try to start XFree with Driver "vesa" in Device Section of XF86Config or xorg.conf. I am using Tyan s2850 with onboard ATI Rage XL. > I am not sure why > this is happening, UNLESS ... does Xvesa make some assumptions about > the location of tables or information it uses to start up? What does > Xvesa do? The only VESA stuff I know about (in plan 9) might be > dependent on a fixed BIOS location for some things. > The Xvesa assuption is just to find the interrupt vector pointing to some area inside the 0xC000 segment, but I don't figure out it. I am not an X server and kdrive expert, maybe Keith Packard can answer it. Finally I get sucess to start X11 inside LinuxBIOS, I make a work around just "hard coding" the right segment and offset in vm86.c. After I will record a video and place in youtube to others people see it. I hope we can create something like the Phoenix BIOS to read email and browser web. > ron > Best regards, Alan

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[LinuxBIOS] thoughts on: gigabyte m57sli-s4 support
by Ryan Moszynski 01 Mar '07

01 Mar '07

yeah, i'd imagine there are a lot of people watching/waiting for this board to be supported. I would like to run linux-bios on my next machine, but i'd rather not pay extra for server/board features that i will never use. so my wishlist for a linuxbios: 1:consumer desktop board, running current intel/amd processors, with at least one pci-e x16 card slot. 2:I will be able to be reasonably confident that the procedure won't brick my motherboard 3:the system, using an add-on video card, such as the radeon 800(supported by xorg 7.2 - r300 driver) is able to give me console video output while in bios mode(like n-curses,) but the videocard is usable to the host machines operating system(linux/xorg,) once linuxbios hands over control of the machine. (without me having to extract any binary data from the manufacturer's bios, (i've never tried it, but that sounds like a pain in the ass.)) pie_in_the_sky_wish: being able to remotely reset/reboot my machine from a crashed state over a network(without relying on expensive/unreliable commercially available solutions, or the half-assed spit and shoestring hacked together hardware solution my organization currently uses on production machines.) That would be awesome. So, right now it seems that you guys are pretty close to being able to do this with the gigabyte/nvidia/am2 board, and that the last big problem i see (once the debug/usb stuff is taken care of,) is finding a consistently reliable way to load the bios onto motherboards that don't have the bios stored on removable flash cards, but are hardwired to the board. To me, this looks like a big problem, but one that needs a solution for linuxbios to be usable outside of machine rooms/datacenters/beowulfs, since pretty much all consumer boards are built this way. just my 2-cents, i'm sure you guys are already aware of most of my points. lastly, i would like to thank those of you driving this project. I really think that you guys are doing important work. thanks ryan p.s.-> feel free to point out any ignorance in the above post. I'm trying to wrap my head around and understand the various issues going on here, but i'm still pretty new. If i'm wrong about something i'd rather know. I won't get offended. On 2/28/07, Ward Vandewege <ward(a)gnu.org> wrote: > On Wed, Feb 28, 2007 at 10:02:12PM +0000, Dave Crossland wrote: > > On 28/02/07, Stefan Reinauer <stepan(a)coresystems.de> wrote: > > > * Ward Vandewege <ward(a)gnu.org> [070228 22:02]: > > > > Add support for the Gigabyte m57sli-s4 board to flashrom. > > > > > > > > Signed-off-by: Ward Vandewege <ward(a)gnu.org> > > > > > > Acked-by: Stefan Reinauer <stepan(a)coresystems.de> > > > and committed in r2564. > > > > Is this the final piece that was mentioned as missing to date? :-) > > No, the missing bits are usb/debug related. But have a look at the patch that > Carl-Daniel posted today (haven't tried it yet). This is just to get flashrom > to work correctly. > > > Also, my machine arrived today, and its BIOS is indeed soldered on. My > > supplier advised that I won't be able to get a BIOS Saviour or spare > > chip, and I'll have to get the LinuxBIOS upgrade right the first time, > > or I'll brick the motherboard... :-( > > Yeah. We're going to desolder the chip, and put a socket on, so that we can > use a bios savior. > > Thanks, > Ward. > > -- > Ward Vandewege <ward(a)fsf.org> > Free Software Foundation - Senior System Administrator > > -- > linuxbios mailing list > linuxbios(a)linuxbios.org > http://www.openbios.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxbios >

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[LinuxBIOS] CONFIG_PCI_ROM_RUN effects
by Joe Pub 01 Mar '07

01 Mar '07

Hi There, What other effects does the CONFIG_PCI_ROM_RUN have, I know that it runs a PCI device's expansion rom during pci_dev_init but does it have any other effects. I have enabled it an attempt to get started on supporting VGA on VMWare. I have left serial console on and kept vga and btext console off. With this configuration I would expect to see almost the same serial output, especially up until the point the pci devices are initalised, but I get nothing at all not even before the pci devices are initalised. Could there be another cause to this? Thanks

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Re: [LinuxBIOS] First desktop motherboard supported by LinuxBIOS: GIGABYTE M57SLI-S4
by Brandon W. Howard 01 Mar '07

01 Mar '07

--- James Simmons <jsimmons(a)infradead.org> wrote: > --- Brandon W. Howard <brandon_waldgrave(a)yahoo.com> wrote: > > Hi, > > > > The GIGABYTE M57SLI-S4 [1] is the first-ever desktop motherboard > > supported by a Free & Open Source BIOS, thanks to AMD engineer > > Yinghai > > Lu who released GPL-licensed code last month. This state-of-the-art > > motherboard is based on the NVIDIA nForce 570 SLI chipset and AMD's > > latest Socket AM2. It contains tons of advanced features such as: > > > > Support for AMD Athlon 64 X2, Athlon 64 FX and Athlon 64 processors > > 2X PCI Express x16 slots > > 3X PCI Express x1 slots > > 2X PCI slots > > 3X 1394a (FireWire) ports > > 10X USB 2.0 > > 16GB maximum memory > > SATA RAID > > 6X SATA 3Gb/s slots. > > > > This motherboard can be obtained today from many retail and online > > stores [2] and the source code for the BIOS can be downloaded from > > the > > LinuxBIOS SVN server [3]. > > > > This is a huge victory in the quest for a completely Free & Open > > Source general-purpose computer that enables users to have full > > control over their own hardware. The Free Software Foundation has > > made > > the campaign for a Free BIOS a top priority because it is a key > > component in the software stack of personal computers [4]. The need > > for a Free BIOS is even more pressing since DRM and Treacherous > > Computing have found their way into some proprietary BIOSes and EFI. > > From a practical perspective, LinuxBIOS removes the need for ugly > > hacks and workarounds in the kernel that compensate for buggy BIOSes > > > > we can now fix the BIOS ourselves. > > > > I encourage everyone upgrading their desktop computers to consider > > getting this motherboard or another one that is supported by > > LinuxBIOS. > > > > -Brandon > > [1] > > http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/Motherboard/Products_Overview.aspx?Prod… > > [2] http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813128014 > > [3] http://linuxbios.org/Download_LinuxBIOS > > [4] http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/free-bios.html > > Quick question. Can this board initialize more than one graphics > card? The motherboard has plenty of expansion slots and is SLI-enabled, so the hardware should support multiple graphics cards. I personally havent tried this, but perhaps someone on the LinuxBIOS mailinglist (CCed) has had experience with such a setup. BTW: An OpenGraphics card (http://OpenGraphics.org , http://TraversalTech.com) will be released pretty soon that will be fully documented and that will come with an open-source VGA video BIOS. -Brandon ____________________________________________________________________________________ Looking for earth-friendly autos? Browse Top Cars by "Green Rating" at Yahoo! Autos' Green Center. http://autos.yahoo.com/green_center/ ____________________________________________________________________________________ 8:00? 8:25? 8:40? Find a flick in no time with the Yahoo! Search movie showtime shortcut. http://tools.search.yahoo.com/shortcuts/#news

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[LinuxBIOS] VGA on gx2/cs5535??
by lihao 01 Mar '07

01 Mar '07

Hi all, My platform is gx2 plus cs5535. I have loaded VSA image. It can boot to payload if I don't add VGA support. Now I want to add VGA, do I need to make a VGA image from Linux myself? cause I notice that if I use VSA, graphics_init() just contains a vrWrite routine which just call VSA code, right? If it needs making VGA image myself, where to put VGA image in flash? How to call it?? From code flow I cannot see clearly how VGA is called if there is do_vsmbios. Regards, Hao Li

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[LinuxBIOS] Questions about gx2/cs5535/vsa
by Hao Li 01 Mar '07

01 Mar '07

Hi all, I am porting olpc/rev_c which is gx2/cs5536 to gx2/cs5535. I have already had VSA image loaded. But I still get the output below: " Finding PCI configuration type. PCI: Sanity check failed pci_check_direct failed " And it seems there is no bridge on the bus 00. Any ideas? Thanks. Hao Li

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coreboot March 2007