* Richard Wilson Richard.Wilson@senokian.com [070312 13:06]:
Guess I'll just have to buy some hardware and be a testing monkey then :-)
At the moment at work we have a Via PD10000, which we use for a bunch of quite mission-critical things. We can reboot it as often as we like, but at the moment, doing so is a PITA because it takes so long. Hmm. Wouldn't it be nice if I could boot LinuxBIOS on it...
Can you please send an lspci -vv to this list?
So here I am, bidding on another one on eBay, so that we can have a spare in case our mission-crit one dies. But it would be a shame for the spare to sit around doing nothing...
Heh.. given that it works (depends on the lspci), you might put it into the LinuxBIOS test system:
http://www.linuxbios.org/Distributed_and_Automated_Testsystem
We started the system last year, but only a single board has been put to test since then.
Its worth saying at this point that I don't want to divert anyone coding actually /useful/ things, so if I have to wait around for someone to have a spare moment to give me a hand, thats fine.
Just send your questions to the list. There's almost always something who might answer them.
I'm happy to go get a chip puller, some spare bios chips, a chip programmer, etc. Just tell me where to get the right ones.
I bought this programmer, and I think it is a really good deal: http://www.progshop.com/shop/programmer/galep/galep4.shtml it burns about everything, requires a non-usb parport though
for the beginning you might get away cheaper with a bios savior (if you still get one) or with hotswapping the chips.
So, my question is this: Shall I go and get a POST card, a chip flasher and some spare lumps of silicon, or should I not bother?
POST card is not required. Better get a serial null modem cable. That's a lot more convenient for debugging.