On 12/7/06, ozcan@ug.bilkent.edu.tr ozcan@ug.bilkent.edu.tr wrote:
Therefore at the moment I cannot boot it with Linux. And unfortunately the BIOS chip is soldered onto the mainboard. So my only bet is programming the chip with LinuxBIOS under Windows CE. Is this possible? I want it so bad, as this machine is garbage with Windows CE running.
That is a very dangerous undertaking. Being able to flash the ROM is the least of your worries. Even if you somehow were able to flash the ROM from WinCE (extremely unlikely), you will certainly stop it from booting the first time you try and flash LinuxBIOS on it.
GX LinuxBIOS requires a VSA binary to boot. The GX VSA code was actually released under GPL for the OLPC project, but the OLPC VSA binary does not work on all GX platforms (at least not on Rumba, and I would bet not on PIC) So you need to not only do the normal (hard) work of porting LinuxBIOS to the PIC, you also have to do the (harder) work of making a VSA binary for the machine. Also, I do not believe the PIC has a serial port sticking out, and the southbridge inside does not support the EHCI debug port.
You could maybe get there, but doing it without a removable flash ROM is not reasonable. At a minumum, you need to de-solder the flash, solder on a socket, and figure out how to get a serial port.