Anybody have a good idea in the long term about how to solve the DoC mess.
I really like this sis730 mainboard with DoC. It's neat to come up in busybox and have all the power of linux available even if the disk is not yet loaded with linux. But that won't work with 735 due to more complex chipset setup. So we have to use FLASH. Then we can't have the nice startup with the kernel etc. that we get with DoC.
We need big flash. But we can't just put big flash in the IDE slot -- then we can't have a disk drive!
Are we really stuck with 256K forever? is there some plugin that gives us FLASH AND a DoC?
ron
On Sun, Sep 08, 2002 at 08:24:35PM -0600, Ronald G Minnich wrote:
Anybody have a good idea in the long term about how to solve the DoC mess.
Maybe put the DoC on the ISA bus? Will require a special LinuxBIOS PCB but only when you really want/need DoC..
M-Systems has an AN on this, I think it's #71 or #91 but I'm not sure.
//Peter
Hello again from Gregg C Levine Can't answer that one, guys, regarding which AN# the add-on board is situated at. But I can state that I've seen it mentioned on their site, and on a dealer's site. I can also attest to the fact that we are not alone with these problems, over on the Linux-MTD list, the problems are getting annoying, and people are getting obscenely lurid with their comments, but not on mail. ------------------- Gregg C Levine hansolofalcon@worldnet.att.net ------------------------------------------------------------ "The Force will be with you...Always." Obi-Wan Kenobi "Use the Force, Luke." Obi-Wan Kenobi (This company dedicates this E-Mail to General Obi-Wan Kenobi ) (This company dedicates this E-Mail to Master Yoda )
-----Original Message----- From: linuxbios-admin@clustermatic.org [mailto:linuxbios- admin@clustermatic.org] On Behalf Of Peter Stuge Sent: Sunday, September 08, 2002 11:16 PM To: Ronald G Minnich Cc: linuxbios@clustermatic.org Subject: Re: The DoC problem
On Sun, Sep 08, 2002 at 08:24:35PM -0600, Ronald G Minnich wrote:
Anybody have a good idea in the long term about how to solve the DoC
mess.
Maybe put the DoC on the ISA bus? Will require a special LinuxBIOS
PCB but
only when you really want/need DoC..
M-Systems has an AN on this, I think it's #71 or #91 but I'm not sure.
//Peter _______________________________________________ Linuxbios mailing list Linuxbios@clustermatic.org http://www.clustermatic.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxbios
On Sun, Sep 08, 2002 at 11:24:56PM -0400, Gregg C Levine wrote:
Hello again from Gregg C Levine Can't answer that one, guys, regarding which AN# the add-on board is situated at. But I can state that I've seen it mentioned on their site,
It was AN #031, but it's about putting a DoC Millennium on the ISA bus.
//Peter
On Mon, 9 Sep 2002, Peter Stuge wrote:
Maybe put the DoC on the ISA bus? Will require a special LinuxBIOS PCB but only when you really want/need DoC..
probably too expensive, in fact in proposals I have seen it cost more than the motherboard!
ron
On Mon, Sep 09, 2002 at 07:34:51AM -0600, Ronald G Minnich wrote:
On Mon, 9 Sep 2002, Peter Stuge wrote:
Maybe put the DoC on the ISA bus? Will require a special LinuxBIOS PCB but only when you really want/need DoC..
probably too expensive, in fact in proposals I have seen it cost more than the motherboard!
According to the AN, it would only involve a few passive components and a simple address decoder. Shouldn't be particularly expensive if it's that simple. But I think there are better alternatives anyway.
//Peter
We need big flash. But we can't just put big flash in the IDE slot -- then we can't have a disk drive!
Are we really stuck with 256K forever? is there some plugin that gives us FLASH AND a DoC?
The mobo won't support two IDE devices? or is it a physical issue?
-Steve
On Sun, 8 Sep 2002, Steve M. Gehlbach wrote:
The mobo won't support two IDE devices? or is it a physical issue?
We would need a special cable I think for the IDE-FLASh devices I have seen. but doable.
ron
On Mon, Sep 09, 2002 at 07:35:24AM -0600, Ronald G Minnich wrote:
On Sun, 8 Sep 2002, Steve M. Gehlbach wrote:
The mobo won't support two IDE devices? or is it a physical issue?
We would need a special cable I think for the IDE-FLASh devices I have seen. but doable.
Wouldn't just a regular IDE cable, a Disk-on-Module and a gender converter work fine? (The DoM has a female connector, it's designed to plug directly into the motherboard connector, occupying one entire IDE channel.)
//Peter
On Sun, Sep 08, 2002 at 08:24:35PM -0600, Ronald G Minnich wrote:
Anybody have a good idea in the long term about how to solve the DoC mess.
Or maybe with a DoM, Disk-on-Module, instead. That's more friendly to J R Hacker at home, who doesn't want to mess with mystery ISA cards and probably has a motherboard without ISA slots anyway.
We need big flash. But we can't just put big flash in the IDE slot -- then we can't have a disk drive!
Well, you can still have one, right? A DoM would only be either master or slave on the IDE controller..
Are we really stuck with 256K forever? is there some plugin that gives us FLASH AND a DoC?
Unless chipsets add more address lines to the ROM bus over night, I think the solution will be a combination. The standard flash and another thing.
It's a shame that it won't work out with just the flash chip though. :(
If you want to construct stuff, you could make a kludge card that goes into the standard BIOS socket and multiplexes between a regular flash and a DoC, e.g. when a read at 0x0 occurs or maybe even by using some JEDEC trick, if any are available or possible, without breaking the standard.
Nah.. Scratch that.
The memory needs to go on to some bus somewhere. Which ones are available? (Add more, I have surely missed several.)
AGP, PCI, ISA, LPC, ROM (flash socket on mobo), I2C, IDE, par/ser, USB
Plug and play flash memory is only available for three of these AFAIK: ROM, IDE and USB.
Maybe USB flash memory is the way to go? Do all chipsets have USB?
//Peter
Well, you can still have one, right? A DoM would only be either master or slave on the IDE controller..
A CF with a CF->IDE converter (simple passive pcb) is a good way to go. Cost is less than 1/2 of DOC. I use them a lot. No special code required either.
Are we really stuck with 256K forever? is there some plugin
that gives us
FLASH AND a DoC?
Unless chipsets add more address lines to the ROM bus over night, I think the solution will be a combination. The standard flash and another thing.
The LPC bus maybe the trend, and is the best for large flash, IMHO. The TSOPs are really hard to handle, and forget about putting then in a socket. And with LPC all sizes have the same # of pins. A little slower than conventional xbus, though. I haven't seen any on off the shelf mobos, but MS Xbox has the interface (unused). Seems that most LPC parts are assuming upper 4M (FFCx xxxx) as the ROM area.
-Steve
On Mon, 2002-09-09 at 10:24, Ronald G Minnich wrote:
Anybody have a good idea in the long term about how to solve the DoC mess.
I really like this sis730 mainboard with DoC. It's neat to come up in busybox and have all the power of linux available even if the disk is not yet loaded with linux. But that won't work with 735 due to more complex chipset setup. So we have to use FLASH. Then we can't have the nice startup with the kernel etc. that we get with DoC.
We need big flash. But we can't just put big flash in the IDE slot -- then we can't have a disk drive!
You can put both Compact Flash and real IDE HD together. What is your problem ??
Ollie
I think the DoC mess is here to stay, there is one potential solution if people are insisting on having DoC, and that is to make up a little board which plugs into a BIOS socket which has both a 256k flash device and a little bit of decode logic for a DoC, as well as a DoC - if anyone is interested in this approach, I could knock together a few prototypes for a couple of $'s, but I have my reservations as to this being a permanent long-term solution for production systems.
Hamish
-----Original Message----- From: linuxbios-admin@clustermatic.org [mailto:linuxbios-admin@clustermatic.org]On Behalf Of Ronald G Minnich Sent: 09 September 2002 04:25 To: linuxbios@clustermatic.org Subject: The DoC problem
Anybody have a good idea in the long term about how to solve the DoC mess.
I really like this sis730 mainboard with DoC. It's neat to come up in busybox and have all the power of linux available even if the disk is not yet loaded with linux. But that won't work with 735 due to more complex chipset setup. So we have to use FLASH. Then we can't have the nice startup with the kernel etc. that we get with DoC.
We need big flash. But we can't just put big flash in the IDE slot -- then we can't have a disk drive!
Are we really stuck with 256K forever? is there some plugin that gives us FLASH AND a DoC?
ron
Linuxbios mailing list Linuxbios@clustermatic.org http://www.clustermatic.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxbios
On Mon, 2002-09-09 at 18:03, Hamish Guthrie (Mail Lists) wrote:
I think the DoC mess is here to stay, there is one potential solution if people are insisting on having DoC, and that is to make up a little board which plugs into a BIOS socket which has both a 256k flash device and a little bit of decode logic for a DoC, as well as a DoC - if anyone is interested in this approach, I could knock together a few prototypes for a couple of $'s, but I have my reservations as to this being a permanent long-term solution for production systems.
Actually this is very easy, The DoC requires only 8kB address window, if we use a 128KB flash EEPROM for LinuxBIOS, we still have the MSB address line free to acts as Chip Select. I believe this have been done by someone in Austria (sorry, I forgot the name) before. On the other hand, we lost the beauty of "only one flash needed".
Ollie
Ollie,
THis is another approch, but the of course losing 128k of address space, which I guess is not a problem, but also, I totally agree with you, it is adding an extra flash device, which is why the original Millennium was not a bad solution, except for all of the other baggage that it brought along with itself!
Hamish
-----Original Message----- From: linuxbios-admin@clustermatic.org [mailto:linuxbios-admin@clustermatic.org]On Behalf Of ollie lho Sent: 09 September 2002 01:00 To: hamishl@dplanet.ch Cc: Ronald G Minnich; linuxbios@clustermatic.org Subject: RE: The DoC problem
On Mon, 2002-09-09 at 18:03, Hamish Guthrie (Mail Lists) wrote:
I think the DoC mess is here to stay, there is one potential solution if people are insisting on having DoC, and that is to make up a
little board
which plugs into a BIOS socket which has both a 256k flash device and a little bit of decode logic for a DoC, as well as a DoC - if anyone is interested in this approach, I could knock together a few
prototypes for a
couple of $'s, but I have my reservations as to this being a permanent long-term solution for production systems.
Actually this is very easy, The DoC requires only 8kB address window, if we use a 128KB flash EEPROM for LinuxBIOS, we still have the MSB address line free to acts as Chip Select. I believe this have been done by someone in Austria (sorry, I forgot the name) before. On the other hand, we lost the beauty of "only one flash needed".
Ollie
Linuxbios mailing list Linuxbios@clustermatic.org http://www.clustermatic.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxbios
On 9 Sep 2002, ollie lho wrote:
Actually this is very easy, The DoC requires only 8kB address window, if we use a 128KB flash EEPROM for LinuxBIOS, we still have the MSB address line free to acts as Chip Select. I believe this have been done by someone in Austria (sorry, I forgot the name) before. On the other hand, we lost the beauty of "only one flash needed".
The question is: is this a product we can purchase and does it cost less than the motherboard?
ron
Maybe there is another answer.
Clearly a big-enough flash EEPROM is the optimal solution. Someone mentioned motherboard manufacturers who asked about LinuxBIOS. If a manufacturer runs an extra address line through to the flash socket, there'd be a board to sell and promote as *especially* suited for use with LinuxBIOS.
Come to think of it - you might be able to help things along.
I'd suggest that you prominently place on the front page of the LinuxBIOS web site a list of those motherboards well-suited for use with LinuxBIOS. That would be the list of motherboards that support 512Kbyte flash or bigger, and for which a LinuxBIOS port exists (a short list?). (Also put up dates to show what's recent).
Place underneath this a contact address so a motherboard manufacturer knows exactly who to contact when they have something to add to the list.
Place on another page all the other motherboards (as now).
Maybe we can generate a bit of competitive pressure :).
-----Original Message----- From: Ronald G Minnich Sent: Monday, September 09, 2002 6:43 AM
On 9 Sep 2002, ollie lho wrote:
Actually this is very easy, The DoC requires only 8kB address window, if we use a 128KB flash EEPROM for LinuxBIOS, we still have the MSB address line free to acts as Chip Select. I believe this have been done by someone in Austria (sorry, I forgot the name) before. On the other hand, we lost the beauty of "only one flash needed".
The question is: is this a product we can purchase and does it cost less than the motherboard?
On Mon, 2002-09-09 at 21:43, Ronald G Minnich wrote:
On 9 Sep 2002, ollie lho wrote:
Actually this is very easy, The DoC requires only 8kB address window, if we use a 128KB flash EEPROM for LinuxBIOS, we still have the MSB address line free to acts as Chip Select. I believe this have been done by someone in Austria (sorry, I forgot the name) before. On the other hand, we lost the beauty of "only one flash needed".
The question is: is this a product we can purchase and does it cost less than the motherboard?
I don't think so. The glue logic are very simple and the PCB area are minimal. In this configuration, you have another bonus that you can use DoC 2000 which is much cheaper than DoC Millennium. IIRC, Brian Stephenson has made some of this long time ago. He also sent me a schematic diagram for the "socket" he invented. Unfortunately, I can not find anything about this left since my last HD crash. It also seems that Brian Stephenson has left us and is no longer on the list.
Ollie
On Mon, 9 Sep 2002, Hamish Guthrie (Mail Lists) wrote:
I think the DoC mess is here to stay, there is one potential solution if people are insisting on having DoC, and that is to make up a little board which plugs into a BIOS socket which has both a 256k flash device and a little bit of decode logic for a DoC, as well as a DoC - if anyone is interested in this approach, I could knock together a few prototypes for a couple of $'s, but I have my reservations as to this being a permanent long-term solution for production systems.
I was not clear but what I want is something that works for long-term production systems. It seems that DoC is unsuitable in the long term due to DoC limitations and M-systems lousy attitude.
I'm thinking in terms of what a company like cwlinux.com could ship to users. The IDE-FLASH would have to be either slave on the primary channel or master on the secondary channel. But wouldn't a slow IDE-FLASH on either channel make the other device run slowly? I thought this used to be the rule -- the IDE bus ran only as fast as the slowest device?
ron
Ronald G Minnich rminnich@lanl.gov writes:
On Mon, 9 Sep 2002, Hamish Guthrie (Mail Lists) wrote:
I think the DoC mess is here to stay, there is one potential solution if people are insisting on having DoC, and that is to make up a little board which plugs into a BIOS socket which has both a 256k flash device and a little bit of decode logic for a DoC, as well as a DoC - if anyone is interested in this approach, I could knock together a few prototypes for a couple of $'s, but I have my reservations as to this being a permanent long-term solution for production systems.
I was not clear but what I want is something that works for long-term production systems. It seems that DoC is unsuitable in the long term due to DoC limitations and M-systems lousy attitude.
I'm thinking in terms of what a company like cwlinux.com could ship to users. The IDE-FLASH would have to be either slave on the primary channel or master on the secondary channel. But wouldn't a slow IDE-FLASH on either channel make the other device run slowly? I thought this used to be the rule -- the IDE bus ran only as fast as the slowest device?
Long term you have to worry about the LPC bus. So pins are not an issue. 512KB is already available at a bootable address, larger chips are likely to appear as more boards move over to the LPC bus. Both Intel and AMD chipsets already support it. I don't know what recent Via chipsets do but I would be very surprised if they didn't.
Etherboot proves how much functionality can be shoved into a small space. Right now I still don't need more than 64KB for a single copy of LinuxBIOS and Etherboot. So a dedicated firmware shell like busybox has plenty of room to live.
I don't see not having a DOC as something to get hung up on.
Eric
Hamish, what would you use for a plug to plug into the BIOS socket? I searched all over the place for a plug (or PLCC to DIP adapter for DoC) and didn't find anything useful for less than about $60 small quantity -- except for the Bios Savior device (about $30 from www.mwave.com).
- Jan
----- Original Message ----- From: "Hamish Guthrie (Mail Lists)" hamishl@dplanet.ch To: "Ronald G Minnich" rminnich@lanl.gov; linuxbios@clustermatic.org Sent: Monday, September 09, 2002 4:03 AM Subject: RE: The DoC problem
I think the DoC mess is here to stay, there is one potential solution if people are insisting on having DoC, and that is to make up a little board which plugs into a BIOS socket which has both a 256k flash device and a little bit of decode logic for a DoC, as well as a DoC - if anyone is interested in this approach, I could knock together a few prototypes for a couple of $'s, but I have my reservations as to this being a permanent long-term solution for production systems.
Hamish
A flash adapter of this type is only economical is high volume. The BOM and assembly costs in low volumes are higher than the cost of a off the shelf motherboard unless you plan on building them yourself and your time is of no or little value.
A design to page out flash memory into a small space in memory is done the way Expanded Memory was done for the old IBM-PC via page frames.
Here's an example of how it could map into system memory:
PC MAIN MEMORY LIM EXPANDED MEMORY -------------- -------------------
+-------------+ | | . Extended . . Memory . . up to . /+-------------+ 32M . 16M on the . // | | . '286, . / / | | . 4096M on . / / | Expanded | . the '386 . / / | Memory | | | / / | | 1M +-------------+ / / | Divided | | | / / | into 16K | 960K +-------------+ / | logical | | Page Frame | / | pages | | 12*16K | / | | | Physical | / | | | Pages | / | | 768K +-------------+\ / . . | | / . . 640K +-------------+/ \ . . | Page Frame | \ . . | 24*16K | \ | | | Physical | \ | | | Pages | \ | | | | \ | | 256K +-------------+ \ | | | | \ \ | | | | \ \ | | | | \ \ | | 0 +-------------+ \ \ | | \ \ | | \ \ | | \ | | +-------------+ 0
The example shows how expanded memory gives you up to a 32M to map into up to 36 16K pages in the positions shown above.
If anyone wants schematics I can dig through some Orcads from the 80's and pass em along ;)
Bari
Jan Kok wrote:
Hamish, what would you use for a plug to plug into the BIOS socket? I searched all over the place for a plug (or PLCC to DIP adapter for DoC) and didn't find anything useful for less than about $60 small quantity -- except for the Bios Savior device (about $30 from www.mwave.com).
- Jan
----- Original Message ----- From: "Hamish Guthrie (Mail Lists)" hamishl@dplanet.ch To: "Ronald G Minnich" rminnich@lanl.gov; linuxbios@clustermatic.org Sent: Monday, September 09, 2002 4:03 AM Subject: RE: The DoC problem
I think the DoC mess is here to stay, there is one potential solution if people are insisting on having DoC, and that is to make up a little board which plugs into a BIOS socket which has both a 256k flash device and a little bit of decode logic for a DoC, as well as a DoC - if anyone is interested in this approach, I could knock together a few prototypes for a couple of $'s, but I have my reservations as to this being a permanent long-term solution for production systems.
Hamish
Linuxbios mailing list Linuxbios@clustermatic.org http://www.clustermatic.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxbios
Bari Ari wrote:
A flash adapter of this type is only economical is high volume. The BOM and assembly costs in low volumes are higher than the cost of a off the shelf motherboard unless you plan on building them yourself and your time is of no or little value.
A design to page out flash memory into a small space in memory is done the way Expanded Memory was done for the old IBM-PC via page frames.
Here's an example of how it could map into system memory:
PC MAIN MEMORY LIM EXPANDED MEMORY -------------- -------------------
+-------------+ | | . Extended . . Memory . . up to . /+-------------+ 32M . 16M on the . // | | . '286, . / / | | . 4096M on . / / | Expanded | . the '386 . / / | Memory | | | / / | | 1M +-------------+ / / | Divided | | | / / | into 16K | 960K +-------------+ / | logical | | Page Frame | / | pages | | 12*16K | / | | | Physical | / | | | Pages | / | | 768K +-------------+\ / . . | | / . . 640K +-------------+/ \ . . | Page Frame | \ . . | 24*16K | \ | | | Physical | \ | | | Pages | \ | | | | \ | | 256K +-------------+ \ | | | | \ \ | | | | \ \ | | | | \ \ | | 0 +-------------+ \ \ | | \ \ | | \ \ | | \ | | +-------------+ 0
Sorry, the ascii drawing didn't format right, so here's a link for a drawing and an article on expanded memory:
http://www.eeng.brad.ac.uk/help/.dos/.expextmem.html
Bari
Use two rows of header pins.
Lee Causier, with Radio H.E.L.L. (Helping Engineers Live Longer), signing off.
Jan Kok wrote:
Hamish, what would you use for a plug to plug into the BIOS socket? I searched all over the place for a plug (or PLCC to DIP adapter for DoC) and didn't find anything useful for less than about $60 small quantity -- except for the Bios Savior device (about $30 from www.mwave.com).
- Jan
----- Original Message ----- From: "Hamish Guthrie (Mail Lists)" hamishl@dplanet.ch To: "Ronald G Minnich" rminnich@lanl.gov; linuxbios@clustermatic.org Sent: Monday, September 09, 2002 4:03 AM Subject: RE: The DoC problem
I think the DoC mess is here to stay, there is one potential solution if people are insisting on having DoC, and that is to make up a little board which plugs into a BIOS socket which has both a 256k flash device and a little bit of decode logic for a DoC, as well as a DoC - if anyone is interested in this approach, I could knock together a few prototypes for a couple of $'s, but I have my reservations as to this being a permanent long-term solution for production systems.
Hamish
Linuxbios mailing list Linuxbios@clustermatic.org http://www.clustermatic.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxbios
----- Original Message ----- From: "Lee" LeeCausier@gamebox.net To: "LinuxBIOS Mailing List" linuxbios@clustermatic.org Sent: Tuesday, September 10, 2002 12:10 PM Subject: Re: The DoC problem
Use two rows of header pins.
Yes, if your motherboard has a DIP socket for the BIOS flash chip. I think Augat or someone makes plugs with a double row of small round pins that are intended to plug into DIP sockets, and don't cause damage to the socket like square header pins do.
But what about motherboards with PLCC sockets? Any cheap PLCC plugs or PLCC to DIP adapters available?
- Jan
Lee Causier, with Radio H.E.L.L. (Helping Engineers Live Longer), signing off.
Jan Kok wrote:
Hamish, what would you use for a plug to plug into the BIOS socket? I searched all over the place for a plug (or PLCC to DIP adapter for DoC)
and
didn't find anything useful for less than about $60 small quantity --
except
for the Bios Savior device (about $30 from www.mwave.com).
- Jan
----- Original Message ----- From: "Hamish Guthrie (Mail Lists)" hamishl@dplanet.ch To: "Ronald G Minnich" rminnich@lanl.gov; linuxbios@clustermatic.org Sent: Monday, September 09, 2002 4:03 AM Subject: RE: The DoC problem
I think the DoC mess is here to stay, there is one potential solution if people are insisting on having DoC, and that is to make up a little
board
which plugs into a BIOS socket which has both a 256k flash device and a little bit of decode logic for a DoC, as well as a DoC - if anyone is interested in this approach, I could knock together a few prototypes for
a
couple of $'s, but I have my reservations as to this being a permanent long-term solution for production systems.
Hamish
Linuxbios mailing list Linuxbios@clustermatic.org http://www.clustermatic.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxbios
Linuxbios mailing list Linuxbios@clustermatic.org http://www.clustermatic.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxbios
I've always thought it would be a good idea to rig up some sort of flash that emulates a floppy for the floppy interface. I dont know if it would be practical or not but it would be an unused device, at least one unit should be free in most computers. Also the drivers for the floppy aren't likely to change with the next generation of kernel. It will at least fit the kernel and busybox but I'm sure it could hold a lot more with some tricks.
GO
On Sunday 08 September 2002 22:24, Ronald G Minnich wrote:
Anybody have a good idea in the long term about how to solve the DoC mess.
I really like this sis730 mainboard with DoC. It's neat to come up in busybox and have all the power of linux available even if the disk is not yet loaded with linux. But that won't work with 735 due to more complex chipset setup. So we have to use FLASH. Then we can't have the nice startup with the kernel etc. that we get with DoC.
We need big flash. But we can't just put big flash in the IDE slot -- then we can't have a disk drive!
Are we really stuck with 256K forever? is there some plugin that gives us FLASH AND a DoC?
ron
Linuxbios mailing list Linuxbios@clustermatic.org http://www.clustermatic.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxbios
-
Bari Ari -
Eric W Biederman -
GNUOrder -
Gregg C Levine -
Hamish Guthrie (Mail Lists) -
Jan Kok -
Lee -
ollie lho -
Peter Stuge -
Preston L. Bannister -
Ronald G Minnich -
Steve M. Gehlbach