[LinuxBIOS] Developer Docs

Hello,
I would like to make a suggestion. I am a newbie to the LinuxBios  
world. I love what I have seen so far. I am ok at C, know a little  
assembly, and would love to contribute to the LinuxBios community. But  
I am not sure how to get started. I have read just about everything I  
can get my hands on, but how do I go about developing a new bios for a  
board? In the FAQ's it talks about some things I would need to get  
started but where do I go from there. I have datasheets and all kinds  
of output from linux (dmidecode, lspci, etc.), POST card. Now what?
Do I just use the code from another board and alter it to my liking? I  
don't want to sound negative or upset anyone but I think alot more  
people would get involved if there was more developer (src)  
documentation. So, I am going to try to document my journey from point  
A to B. So the next person that comes along won't be as stumped?? Make  
sense or is it just me? Can someone tell me where I need to go from  
here?

Thanks - Joe

[Corey Osgood]

[e-mail] wrote:
> Hello,
> I would like to make a suggestion. I am a newbie to the LinuxBios  
> world. I love what I have seen so far. I am ok at C, know a little  
> assembly, and would love to contribute to the LinuxBios community. But  
> I am not sure how to get started. I have read just about everything I  
> can get my hands on, but how do I go about developing a new bios for a  
> board? In the FAQ's it talks about some things I would need to get  
> started but where do I go from there. I have datasheets and all kinds  
> of output from linux (dmidecode, lspci, etc.), POST card. Now what?
> Do I just use the code from another board and alter it to my liking? I  
> don't want to sound negative or upset anyone but I think alot more  
> people would get involved if there was more developer (src)  
> documentation. So, I am going to try to document my journey from point  
> A to B. So the next person that comes along won't be as stumped?? Make  
> sense or is it just me? Can someone tell me where I need to go from  
> here?
>
> Thanks - Joe

My 2 cents, for what they're worth: grab something similar to what
you're looking at's source code, and the docs for it if you can, and
learn how it works (if you have a system you can play with it on also,
it's that much better). Then try to do the same thing, with your chips.
There are a few to avoid, such as (for the moment) i440bx, but most of
the chipsets do work. If you want an SDRAM northbridge that works and
you can get docs for, look at the via vt8601, and grab the docs from
here: http://rom.by/doki/VIA/8601A_Apollo_PLE133.rar. Either that, or
the intel e7501 has some very clean and well documented code, but you'd
have to find the docs on it (afaik, that's what uwe based his raminit.c
on for 440bx).

The docs on LBv2 are very sparse (this is a known issue), so that's
really the only way to go, even most of the build docs are for LBv1 (or
freebios, even). LBv3 hopefully won't have these issues, so it should
make things easier on everyone and hopefully get some more developers
who know what they're doing (unlike me :-p) on board. Oh yeah, and
welcome to the list!

-Corey

[Uwe Hermann]

On Wed, Feb 28, 2007 at 09:48:12PM -0500, [e-mail] wrote:
> Hello,
> I would like to make a suggestion. I am a newbie to the LinuxBios  
> world. I love what I have seen so far. I am ok at C, know a little  
> assembly, and would love to contribute to the LinuxBios community. But  
> I am not sure how to get started. I have read just about everything I  
> can get my hands on, but how do I go about developing a new bios for a  
> board? In the FAQ's it talks about some things I would need to get  
> started but where do I go from there. I have datasheets and all kinds  
> of output from linux (dmidecode, lspci, etc.), POST card. Now what?

First thing is always to get your Super I/O working. Without that you
won't have serial output, which makes debugging almost impossible.
> Do I just use the code from another board and alter it to my liking?

If one which is similar to yours is supported, then yes, that's a good
idea.
> I don't want to sound negative or upset anyone but I think alot more  
> people would get involved if there was more developer (src)  
> documentation.

I agree. We need lots more documentation.

Uwe.

[Steve Casselman]

The best way to help might be to help write up documentation. Most people who do far out programming don't like to do documentation. Lack of documentation slows down second wavers like you and me. If you really want to know linuxbios I would suggest you help write some good documentation. You would be helping everyone, even those who started the project..

Steve

[e-mail] wrote:
  Hello,
I would love to contribute to the LinuxBios community. But

Ok, My SuperIO chip is a SMSC LPC47M192. Looks like I will be able to  
use one of the other SMSC LPC47*** configs for a template. Once I get  
it setup how do I test it without everything else (nothbridge,  
southbridge, etc)??

Thanks - Joe

Quoting Uwe Hermann :
> On Wed, Feb 28, 2007 at 09:48:12PM -0500, [e-mail] wrote:
> > Hello,
> > I would like to make a suggestion. I am a newbie to the LinuxBios
> > world. I love what I have seen so far. I am ok at C, know a little
> > assembly, and would love to contribute to the LinuxBios community. But
> > I am not sure how to get started. I have read just about everything I
> > can get my hands on, but how do I go about developing a new bios for a
> > board? In the FAQ's it talks about some things I would need to get
> > started but where do I go from there. I have datasheets and all kinds
> > of output from linux (dmidecode, lspci, etc.), POST card. Now what?
>
> First thing is always to get your Super I/O working. Without that you
> won't have serial output, which makes debugging almost impossible.
> > Do I just use the code from another board and alter it to my liking?
>
> If one which is similar to yours is supported, then yes, that's a good
> idea.
> > I don't want to sound negative or upset anyone but I think alot more
> > people would get involved if there was more developer (src)
> > documentation.
>
> I agree. We need lots more documentation.
> Uwe.
>
> http://www.hermann-uwe.de  | http://www.holsham-traders.de
> http://www.crazy-hacks.org | http://www.unmaintained-free-software.org

[Uwe Hermann]

On Thu, Mar 01, 2007 at 07:23:15PM -0500, [e-mail] wrote:
> Ok, My SuperIO chip is a SMSC LPC47M192. Looks like I will be able to  
> use one of the other SMSC LPC47*** configs for a template.

Yep. Please use the lpc47b272 as a basis, that one already has proper
license headers.
> Once I get  
> it setup how do I test it without everything else (nothbridge,  
> southbridge, etc)??

Use a mainboard target which is similar to yours, then edit
src/mainboard/foo/bar/auto.c and replace the Super I/O used there
with yours.

Then, in the main() function of auto.c (somewhere after the
console_init() call) you can use

print_debug("Hello world\n");

to test whether you get serial output. You won't get any further as long
as northbridge/southbridge aren't set up, but you can take care about
that later...

Building your target is roughly this:

cd targets
./buildtarget VENDOR/MAINBOARD
cd VENDOR/MAINBOARD/MAINBOARD
make

The resulting linuxbios.rom is your image you can flash.

You might need to edit ROM_SIZE in VENDOR/MAINBOARD/Config.lb to adapt
it to your BIOS-chip size.

HTH, Uwe.