I have access to a few WBTs at a surplus place, and I've dug up the specs on them:
Cyrix Pentium clone - 266MHz up to 128MB SDRAM ports: PS/2 keyb/mouse, 2 USB 1.1, 2 serial, 1 parallel, 10/100 ethernet, and sound in/out
the chipset(s) include a SuperIO 97317, and a CS5530 (which handles the soundblaster compatible sound and presumably the video).
The board has an Award BIOS little square-like ROM, and a larger 8MB ROM which holds Windows CE.
There are also various places on the board which could have had various optional features, but there is no IDE, floppy, etc...but I think if I solder on a PCI slot where it belongs I could hack some more funtionality onto it for testing.
I've been thinking of how to go about hacking this thing, and the easiest method I'd like to try first: Burning a new ROM to replace the Windows CE version. I doubt this thing would be easy to flash the BIOS, if it even had that capability.
I'm not looking for graphics, a text screen will be more than sufficient.
On this, I have two questions: What's my chances for success (educated guesses?), and has anyone done something similar?
On Tue, Sep 23, 2003 at 05:04:37PM -0400, Thomas Fritz wrote:
I have access to a few WBTs at a surplus place, and I've dug up the specs on them:
Cyrix Pentium clone - 266MHz up to 128MB SDRAM ports: PS/2 keyb/mouse, 2 USB 1.1, 2 serial, 1 parallel, 10/100 ethernet, and sound in/out
the chipset(s) include a SuperIO 97317, and a CS5530 (which handles the soundblaster compatible sound and presumably the video).
Expect this to be a GX1+5530, or maybe even a Geode (SCx2xx) system.
LinuxBIOS is running on both those platforms and there is some kind of support for the 97317 in the freebios tree, but findgrep yields nothing in freebios2, I guess it simply hasn't been ported over yet.
The board has an Award BIOS little square-like ROM,
This is probably a regular flash ROM in a PLCC package.
and a larger 8MB ROM which holds Windows CE.
What kind of ROM is this, exactly? Can you peel off the label and read what's printed on the chip(s)?
There are also various places on the board which could have had various optional features, but there is no IDE, floppy, etc...but I think if I solder on a PCI slot where it belongs I could hack some more funtionality onto it for testing.
The CS5530 and SCx2xx (which have the 5530 integrated) have IDE, but there may just not be a connector for it. The IDE pins may also be multiplexed away for some other use in this particular system.
I've been thinking of how to go about hacking this thing, and the easiest method I'd like to try first: Burning a new ROM to replace the Windows CE version. I doubt this thing would be easy to flash the BIOS, if it even had that capability.
Maybe, maybe not. With a little luck the HW designers have wired the flash memory to always be writable, given the right software commands of course.
I'm not looking for graphics, a text screen will be more than sufficient.
Either should be possible.
On this, I have two questions: What's my chances for success (educated guesses?), and has anyone done something similar?
I'd say you'll succeed given time, you will have to learn the quirks of this particular system and then likely make a port of freebios2 to it. These two processes are usually concurrent.
If it's an SCx2xx system, check out the nano stuff in the freebios tree, and port it to freebios2. :)
//Peter
* Peter Stuge stuge-linuxbios@cdy.org [030924 02:31]:
On Tue, Sep 23, 2003 at 05:04:37PM -0400, Thomas Fritz wrote:
The board has an Award BIOS little square-like ROM,
This is probably a regular flash ROM in a PLCC package.
and a larger 8MB ROM which holds Windows CE.
What kind of ROM is this, exactly? Can you peel off the label and read what's printed on the chip(s)?
probably a DiskOnChip, This looks like the GX1 board I have.
Best regards, Stefan Reinauer
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Peter Stuge -
Stefan Reinauer -
Thomas Fritz