Disclaimer: I too am a N00B and these are my observations thus far. They may not be 100% correct, but these things have worked for me. I hope that they'll help other N00Bz get started.
WHAT IS FREEBIOS2?
Well I stumbled upon freebios2 when I couldn't find support in the freebios tree for my Tyan s2885. Then I noticed under the CVSWeb browser for the project the freebios2 directory.
Apparently, this is what will be LinuxBIOS V2. They've done away with kernel patches, so you don't need to worry about patching the kernel like in V1. Instead there is an intermediary payload that can be Etherboot, FILO, or some other loader to get your Linux kernel into memory.
WHY CAN'T I GET THE SOURCES FROM SOURCEFORGE (ANYMORE)?
If you're like me, all of a sudden CVS access stopped working. Well, they changed the BIND implementation, so the documentation is out of date. You need to use, "cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/freebios login". There is still no password for anonymous login.
WHERE DO I START?
Build the documentation under freebios2/documentation. It will give you a solid overview of how the project works, including how to download the source you just downloaded. ;-)
Freebios2 supports a number of newer boards. Tyan are particularly well-supported and the EPIA boards are actively being worked on. Look under, "freebios2/targets..." for the collection.
HOW DO I BUILD FREEBIOS2? Once you've selected a vendor and mainboard you should execute, "./buildtarget <vendor>/<board>". This will generate all sources specific to your mainboard. To make a rom image, start your make in the freebios2/targets/<vendor>/<board>/<board> directory. If all goes smoothly you should get a linuxbios.rom image.
HOW DO I FLASH A ROM?
There are a number of methods and I'm not versed enough to cover them all. But I have successfully used the BIOS flash utility from AMI, and I currently use a professional Data I/O burner. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out the proper format to use on my burner. There is no format; it's just a straight binary image, so use binary mode (on the Data I/O it's "absolute binary (16)").
There is also a flash-n-burn utility in the source tree. Perhaps someone on the list can add the specifics of how to get that going on this thread.
HOW DO I CHANGE CONFIGURATION OF MY IMAGE?
First take a look at freebios2/targets/<vendor>/<board>/Config.lb. This is the main configuration file for your ROM image. This is where you specify what payload to use, and most of the settings that anyone would care about. Make sure to do a "./buildtarget <vendor>/<board>" whenever you modify this file.
However, in my case I was running into issues running my dual-processor board with only one processor. As it turns out there is another Config.lb located in freebios2/src/mainboard/<vendor>/<board>. This file controls the contents of some of the generated sources for your board. To date, this is the only way I was able to prevent my ROM image from trying to initialize a CPU that wasn't there.
WHY DON'T I SEE ANYTHING HAPPENING?
In most cases the VGA support just isn't there yet. So go find yourself a null modem cable and hook up your console at 15200-8-N-1, and sit back and watch the fireworks!
WHAT ABOUT PAYLOADS?
I'm currently exploring this area. The first payload I used successfully was FILO. No you don't make pastry with it. It is a bootloader that acts much like LILO. You can get the source here: http://felixx.tsn.or.jp/~ts1/filo.
If you have an IDE disk with a Linux kernel on it, this is the way to get started.
If you're diskless then you may want to try Etherboot: http://etherboot.sourceforge.net. This payload gives you the ability to load over the network, but requires you to configure a DHCP server and TFTP server at a minimum.
Like LinuxBIOS, Etherboot expects an ELF formatted image, so if you're loading a kernel across the network you need to run it through mkelfImage. As of now the correct version to use is 2.5. You can get the latest sources here: ftp://ftp.lnxi.com/pub/mkelfImage/mkelfImage-2.5.tar.gz.
WHAT ABOUT ZELF?
This is my latest N00B stumbling block, and unfortunately I haven't found an answer. I know that it's a compressed elf format, but I can't figure out what I need to do to get elfboot (part of LinuxBIOS) to load payloads with the ZELF extension. So for now I would recommend N00Bz stick with ELF format, until we get a definitive answer.
Hope this is helpful, good luck!
Jay Miller Actuality Systems, Inc. jmiller@acutality-systems.com