[LinuxBIOS] VIA EPIA build

[Jun OKAJIMA]

Dont you have any suggestion?

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It would be sure that many guys in this list have succeeded to
build a rom image for VIA EPIA series with both freebios1 and 2.
How you did it?  And what is the difference with my case?

--- Okajima.

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Hello Linux BIOS developers.

I have tried to run linuxbios on VIA EPIA-C800 M/B, but failed. I tried
both freebios1 and 2 src trees, but both failed, Sigh. Anyone can help me ?

Source trees:
  freebios-20041019-1200.tar.bz2 
  freebios2-20050305-0000.tar.bz2
     from http://snapshots.linuxbios.org/
in both case, I uses filo/usb from Etherboot 5.4.0 as a payload.

FreeBIOS1:
  I tried with both util/config/epia.conf and epia800.conf, but both failed.
  epia.conf does not run. it shows weird and buggy chars. must be runaway.
  epia800.conf runs. but does not load a payload. just ended up with
  "bad gzip magic numbers" after had execed pc80/ide_* stuff.
  I looked up why epia.conf does not run and found the difference between both
  configurations. it would need these lines to be added, but why?
option BOOT_IDE=1
option IDE_BOOT_DRIVE=0
option ONE_TRACK=63

FreeBIOS2:
  Just did not work. it seems not to work totally, because even VGA sync
  signal does not comes. BTW, how to enable VGA debugging output?

--- Okajima, Jun. Tokyo, Japan.

[Peter Stuge]

On Tue, May 03, 2005 at 05:03:14AM +0900, Jun OKAJIMA wrote:
> FreeBIOS1:
>   I tried with both util/config/epia.conf and epia800.conf, but
> both failed.
>   epia.conf does not run. it shows weird and buggy chars. must be
> runaway.

I don't think so. Try changing the serial port speed in the terminal
program, first try half the speed and if that doesn't work try
experimenting. I seem to recall that the EPIA builds had a problem
with serial port init and that made the port run at 57600 instead of
115200.
> epia800.conf runs. but does not load a payload. just ended up with
>   "bad gzip magic numbers" after had execed pc80/ide_* stuff.

Same for all payloads? I guess there's a problem with RAM then.
> FreeBIOS2:
>   Just did not work. it seems not to work totally, because even VGA
> sync signal does not comes. BTW, how to enable VGA debugging output?

Initializing VGA is very complex and the code for bringing VGA up in
LinuxBIOS has not been around for too long. I suggest you experiment
further with the v2 code, v1 is no longer developed and unsupported,
and stick to the serial console.

//Peter

[Ronald G. Minnich]

On Tue, 3 May 2005, Jun OKAJIMA wrote:
> Dont you have any suggestion?

you will have to give us a few more days, we have a new guy doing EPIA and 
I think he will make it go.

ron