Hi,
I bought a TC7020, Windows CE.NET based thin client terminal for $10 about a week ago, and wanted to make it a car-puter.
http://www.televideo.com/TeleVideo/TC7000_WinCE_Series.htm
The box uses NS Geode GX1 CPU, PC97317 Super I/O, CS5530A south bridge, DP83815 NIC, and SST 29EE020 BIOS chip.
I noticed the system configuration is very similiar to eaglelion/5bcm, and wanted to see how far it goes with unmodified configuration.
I chosed Etherboot as payload, it just booted as if the 5bcm and TC7020 was identical box.
Thank you for the great software!
Kenji Noguchi
Hi,
On Wed, Apr 11, 2007 at 05:48:20PM -0700, Kenji Noguchi wrote:
I bought a TC7020, Windows CE.NET based thin client terminal for $10 about a week ago, and wanted to make it a car-puter.
They cost $50 on eBay, from US sellers that ship worldwide. http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=250101952237
I chosed Etherboot as payload, it just booted as if the 5bcm and TC7020 was identical box.
They could be, if they are made from the same reference design. Thanks for the good news! :)
//Peter
On Thu, Apr 12, 2007 at 07:11:22AM +0200, Peter Stuge wrote:
On Wed, Apr 11, 2007 at 05:48:20PM -0700, Kenji Noguchi wrote:
I bought a TC7020, Windows CE.NET based thin client terminal for $10 about a week ago, and wanted to make it a car-puter.
Great, added to http://linuxbios.org/Supported_Motherboards.
They cost $50 on eBay, from US sellers that ship worldwide. http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=250101952237
Whoa, how about a cluster of those? ;-)
http://cgi.ebay.de/16-TeleVideo-TeleCLIENT-7050i-7010-7020-7030-Windows_W0QQ...
I chosed Etherboot as payload, it just booted as if the 5bcm and TC7020 was identical box.
They could be, if they are made from the same reference design. Thanks for the good news! :)
Yep, indeed :)
Can you provide some more information on what works and what doesn't? Any pitfalls or things one should know? Which payload are you booting? etc. etc.
Can you write up a small HOWTO or experiences report for the wiki? And maybe take one or two (freely licensed) pictures (or even a video of the thing booting LinuxBIOS)? That would be really great!
In general, I think we should look into thin clients a bit more. There are quite a number of them out there and many older ones can be had really cheap nowadays. The same is true for some set-top-boxes...
Supporting Geode-based ones should be pretty easy mostly, and from a few pictures I've seen so far, many seem to have socketed BIOS chips (or DoCs).
The benefits of LinuxBIOS on such systems is pretty obvious, too (fast boot times, for example)...
Anyone else out there who already used/uses LinuxBIOS on thin clients? Set-top-boxes? Please fill the wiki page at http://linuxbios.org/Use_Cases :)
Uwe.
hi,
It's been a few weeks since I posted about IRQ problem. I finally managed to assign proper IRQs to PCI devices.
Sorry I didn't respond to a Peter's question & suggestion.
On Mon Apr 16 19:22:36 CEST 2007 Peter Stuge wrote:
Are you able to boot the system into Linux with the factory BIOS?
No, TeleVideo TC7020 is a WinCE terminal that boots a remote desktop application straight away (no other apps allowed). As far as I searched in the factory BIOS it does not have $PIR signature. So I guessed getpir wouldn't help.
Instead, I fed the factory BIOS to bochs, and waited for outp/inp operation on PCI config registers. Thanks to folks from #openbios last weekend helping me, eventually I found a writing operation on 0x5c 0x5d of CS5530 PCI config register, which is IRQ sterring registers.
I put these lines in mainboard.c
device_t pdev; //CS5530A pdev = dev_find_slot(0, (0x12 << 3) + 0); pci_write_config8(pdev, 0x5c, 0xab); pci_write_config8(pdev, 0x5d, 0x09); pci_assign_irqs(0, 0x13, usb_irq); pci_assign_irqs(0, 0x15, nic_irq);
I couldn't find a code in LinuxBIOSv2 that does the same thing Where should I put these lines if such code does not exist, and mainboard.c is not a right place? I've read other GeodeGx1 mobo's code that features GeodeGX1 and CS5530 but I couldn't figure out. I will submit a patch upon fixing above.
Sometime ago Uwe Hermann wrote:
Can you provide some more information on what works and what doesn't?
works: IDE, USB, NIC doesn't work: VGA, Sound , Reset(rebooting hangs the machine)
Any pitfalls or things one should know? Which payload are you booting?
The payload is etherboot, and then eb boots filo, filo boots Linux from CF. It should be straightforward to boot the box with LB, I don't see any pit falls.
What I will do next is to get VGA and sound. but I'm not sure if BIOS ROM (256kbytes) has a enough room for it. In the mean time, I'm writing a HOW-TO.
thanks, Kenji Noguchi
On Fri, May 04, 2007 at 11:04:45PM -0700, Kenji Noguchi wrote:
//CS5530A pdev = dev_find_slot(0, (0x12 << 3) + 0); pci_write_config8(pdev, 0x5c, 0xab); pci_write_config8(pdev, 0x5d, 0x09); pci_assign_irqs(0, 0x13, usb_irq); pci_assign_irqs(0, 0x15, nic_irq);
I couldn't find a code in LinuxBIOSv2 that does the same thing Where should I put these lines if such code does not exist, and mainboard.c is not a right place?
I think this goes into the mainboard Config.lb, where the PCI devices are listed.
doesn't work: VGA,
Not even with geodefb?
Sound ,
There is a FreeBSD driver but that doesn't help you of course. See if you can find a native CS5530 ALSA driver that does the same thing.
http://alumni.cse.ucsc.edu/~brucem/gx_audio/
The SB16 support is emulated and not what you want.
Reset(rebooting hangs the machine)
Dunno about this one.
//Peter
we definitely need the changes so we can set up a mainboard directory for this board :-)
thanks
ron
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Kenji Noguchi -
Peter Stuge -
ron minnich -
Uwe Hermann