[LinuxBIOS] VIA EPIA M10000 (Nehemiah) CentaurHauls Stepping 5 support status

[tristan]

Hi list,
I'd like to know the exact support status of LinuxBIOS on VIA EPIA
M10000 (Nehemiah) CentaurHauls Stepping 5. I've seen messages (August
2005) that say VGA is supported, and more recent threads that say it
isn't. So, what is supported by the mainstream LinuxBios v2 ? And what
is not yet?
Are these any patches around that could achieve better support?
All different messages I see are rather confusing ...

Another question: VIA has published a "FastBoot" BIOS that seems to be a
fork of LinuxBIOS, since it's a fork and LinuxBIOS is covered by GPL, is
FastBoot a GPL violation? Someone has ever had the sources of FastBoot?
If ever, could it lead to a better support of EPIA motherboards?

Thanks for you answers,

Tristan

[LinuxBIOS] VIA EPIA M10000 (Nehemiah) CentaurHauls Stepping 5 support status

[Anton Borisov]

On Wed, 09 Nov 2005 08:46:01 +0100
tristan  wrote:
> I'd like to know the exact support status of LinuxBIOS on VIA EPIA
> M10000 (Nehemiah) CentaurHauls Stepping 5. I've seen messages (August
> 2005) that say VGA is supported, and more recent threads that say it
> isn't. So, what is supported by the mainstream LinuxBios v2 ? And what
> is not yet?
> Are these any patches around that could achieve better support?
> All different messages I see are rather confusing ...

Textmode at exactly your version of EPIA is supported. ACPI subsystem is ok. Videomode is limited to 320x240x8 or 640x480x4 (from my experience with EPIA-M 10K).

[LinuxBIOS] VIA EPIA M10000 (Nehemiah) CentaurHauls Stepping 5 support status

[Jun OKAJIMA]

> > I'd like to know the exact support status of LinuxBIOS on VIA EPIA
> > M10000 (Nehemiah) CentaurHauls Stepping 5. I've seen messages (August
> > 2005) that say VGA is supported, and more recent threads that say it
> > isn't. So, what is supported by the mainstream LinuxBios v2 ? And what
> > is not yet?
> > Are these any patches around that could achieve better support?
> > All different messages I see are rather confusing ...
>
> Textmode at exactly your version of EPIA is supported. ACPI subsystem is ok. Videomode

is limited to 320x240x8 or 640x480x4 (from my experience with EPIA-M 10K).
>

I feel I am facing same problem. Any solution? I have been using EPIA-MII 1.2GHz.
BTW, you tried both cold boot ( power off, wait a minite, then power on to boot)
and hot? boot( just push reset button).

As my experiment, cold boot does not work, but this way works.
1. you boot with normal bios.
2. switch a bios to lx2, with RD1 bios savior.
3. push reset button.

--- Okajima, Jun. Tokyo, Japan.

[John Galloway]

On Nov 8, 2005, at 11:46 PM, tristan wrote:
> Another question: VIA has published a "FastBoot" BIOS that seems to  
> be a
> fork of LinuxBIOS, since it's a fork and LinuxBIOS is covered by  
> GPL, is
> FastBoot a GPL violation? Someone has ever had the sources of  
> FastBoot?

There was some discussion of this on the VIA-Arena forum but I don't
know that any certain evidence was produced.  It seems very unlikely  
that VIA
wrote FastBoot from scratch so the general consensus was that they
are likely violating the GPL from LinuxBios.  But getting any sort of  
interaction
from VIA on such is also likely going to be difficult as they pretty  
much do
not offer support for anyone other than large customers.  I seem to  
recall
that FastBoot is also setup to boot Windows only, though I'm not sure  
what
this means, if true, from a technical point of view (support only  
booting from a FAT
file system or some such?).
   -jrg

[Ronald G Minnich]

tristan wrote:
> Hi list,
> I'd like to know the exact support status of LinuxBIOS on VIA EPIA
> M10000 (Nehemiah) CentaurHauls Stepping 5. I've seen messages (August
> 2005) that say VGA is supported, and more recent threads that say it
> isn't. So, what is supported by the mainstream LinuxBios v2 ? And what
> is not yet?
> Are these any patches around that could achieve better support?
> All different messages I see are rather confusing ...

all the patches are in the issue trackers, and after SC 2005 I intend to 
try to get this stuff into the tree. It seems like 3 different groups 
have got 3 different patches.
> Another question: VIA has published a "FastBoot" BIOS that seems to be a
> fork of LinuxBIOS, since it's a fork and LinuxBIOS is covered by GPL, is
> FastBoot a GPL violation? Someone has ever had the sources of FastBoot?
> If ever, could it lead to a better support of EPIA motherboards?

is fastboot a GPL violation ?If it is based on linuxbios, then yet it 
is. Does anyone have time to track this down?  No. The FSF has been 
informed, as of a few years ago.

ron