Hello, I just received my EPIA 800 and am itching to get it up and running with freebios. I have flash parts for a board I was previously working on. I'd like to know if they are compatible, they are the same form factor (as in PLCC chips). The one in the board is a SST 39sf020a, and I have Winbond w29c020cp90b. How do I know if they are compatible? I'd rather not flash this and it not work, and then not be able to do anything with it...
The best thing to do is compare data sheets. Also, look at the linuxbios flash-and-burn program and see what chips it supports. If your chip isn't supported, you may need to add the support yourself.
Flash chips tend to vary in operating voltage, programming voltage, block size, block organization, and bus interface. There are also variations to the commands they support.
You *must* make sure they have the same bus interface, i.e., you can't swap LPC or FWH chips with traditional chips. The EPIA board uses a traditional flash chip. Make sure then pinouts are the same, and the voltage requirements for the two chips are the same. Then you can be sure you're not going to fry anything.
If the block organizations are different, that doesn't matter so much. As long as you can erase the whole chip and program it, it should work to boot the system.
Flash chips also come in all kinds of different speed grades. I may be wrong, but I doubt the speeds matter much. The BIOS gets copied into RAM almost immediately and then runs from there.
Also, note that programming flash chips from usermode can be tricky. Some chips are very sensitive to timing and may not program correctly. I recently had problems programming a winbond chip until I removed all the print statements from flash-and-burn! The moral of the story is to always verify that the flash was done error-free.
It might be worth the $20 to buy a Bios Savior, and you'll get the same SST chip with that...
Regards,
Jeff
On Fri, Aug 22, 2003 at 01:49:48PM -0600, Nathanael Noblet wrote:
Hello, I just received my EPIA 800 and am itching to get it up and running with freebios. I have flash parts for a board I was previously working on. I'd like to know if they are compatible, they are the same form factor (as in PLCC chips). The one in the board is a SST 39sf020a, and I have Winbond w29c020cp90b. How do I know if they are compatible? I'd rather not flash this and it not work, and then not be able to do anything with it...
Hi, has anyone tried out Steven James' baremetal toolkit / bootselect and run into this problem?
I put a 16 byte 'tag' before each payload. My tags have the standard '$TAG$' beginning, then 0x00 to show that there will be no more additional 16 byte tag blocks on that payload, then four 0x00s because the payload size is optional, and then 6 characters for the name. Maybe the payload size isn't option after all?
I got bootselect out of a three month old cvs because it doesn't currently compile.
Welcome to the LinuxLabs boot chooser! Found LinuxBIOS table at: 500 210:init_bytes() - zkernel_start:0xfff00000 zkernel_mask:0x0000ffff 71:rom_read_bytes() - overflowed source buffer. max_block = 15 Loading tag 0 @ 00000000 Tag contents: 24 54 41 47 24 00 00 00 00 00 6d 65 6d 38 36 20 TAG block count = 0 init_bytes found 2 tags 71:rom_read_bytes() - overflowed source buffer. max_block = 15 Loading tag 0 @ 00000000 Tag contents: 24 54 41 47 24 00 00 00 00 00 6d 65 6d 38 36 20 TAG block count = 0 Stream count = 2 blocks STREAM: 0. mem86 STREAM: 1. e1000 Choose a stream: Loading tag 1 @ 00010ee0 Tag contents: 24 54 41 47 24 00 00 00 00 00 65 31 30 30 30 20 TAG block count = 0
Welcome to elfboot, the open sourced starter. January 2002, Eric Biederman. Version 1.2
Cannot Load ELF Image
Stupid user error! I managed to sneak an extra byte into my tags :) Sorry for the false bug report.
- Adam Agnew
On Fri, 22 Aug 2003, Adam Agnew wrote:
Hi, has anyone tried out Steven James' baremetal toolkit / bootselect and run into this problem?
I put a 16 byte 'tag' before each payload. My tags have the standard '$TAG$' beginning, then 0x00 to show that there will be no more additional 16 byte tag blocks on that payload, then four 0x00s because the payload size is optional, and then 6 characters for the name. Maybe the payload size isn't option after all?
I got bootselect out of a three month old cvs because it doesn't currently compile.
Welcome to the LinuxLabs boot chooser! Found LinuxBIOS table at: 500 210:init_bytes() - zkernel_start:0xfff00000 zkernel_mask:0x0000ffff 71:rom_read_bytes() - overflowed source buffer. max_block = 15 Loading tag 0 @ 00000000 Tag contents: 24 54 41 47 24 00 00 00 00 00 6d 65 6d 38 36 20 TAG block count = 0 init_bytes found 2 tags 71:rom_read_bytes() - overflowed source buffer. max_block = 15 Loading tag 0 @ 00000000 Tag contents: 24 54 41 47 24 00 00 00 00 00 6d 65 6d 38 36 20 TAG block count = 0 Stream count = 2 blocks STREAM: 0. mem86 STREAM: 1. e1000 Choose a stream: Loading tag 1 @ 00010ee0 Tag contents: 24 54 41 47 24 00 00 00 00 00 65 31 30 30 30 20 TAG block count = 0
Welcome to elfboot, the open sourced starter. January 2002, Eric Biederman. Version 1.2
Cannot Load ELF Image
Linuxbios mailing list Linuxbios@clustermatic.org http://www.clustermatic.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxbios
Greetings,
I need to add a tag generator in there! The newer baremetal is breaking with ide.c from the freebios/src tree. I'm looking at that, but in the meantime, you can change util/baremetal/lib/Makefile to skip ide.c and it will compile (minus ide support of course).
When I get a moment, I'll either fix it or remove IDE in CVS for now.
G'day, sjames
On Sat, 23 Aug 2003, Adam Agnew wrote:
Stupid user error! I managed to sneak an extra byte into my tags :) Sorry for the false bug report.
- Adam Agnew
On Fri, 22 Aug 2003, Adam Agnew wrote:
Hi, has anyone tried out Steven James' baremetal toolkit / bootselect and run into this problem?
I put a 16 byte 'tag' before each payload. My tags have the standard '$TAG$' beginning, then 0x00 to show that there will be no more additional 16 byte tag blocks on that payload, then four 0x00s because the payload size is optional, and then 6 characters for the name. Maybe the payload size isn't option after all?
I got bootselect out of a three month old cvs because it doesn't currently compile.
Welcome to the LinuxLabs boot chooser! Found LinuxBIOS table at: 500 210:init_bytes() - zkernel_start:0xfff00000 zkernel_mask:0x0000ffff 71:rom_read_bytes() - overflowed source buffer. max_block = 15 Loading tag 0 @ 00000000 Tag contents: 24 54 41 47 24 00 00 00 00 00 6d 65 6d 38 36 20 TAG block count = 0 init_bytes found 2 tags 71:rom_read_bytes() - overflowed source buffer. max_block = 15 Loading tag 0 @ 00000000 Tag contents: 24 54 41 47 24 00 00 00 00 00 6d 65 6d 38 36 20 TAG block count = 0 Stream count = 2 blocks STREAM: 0. mem86 STREAM: 1. e1000 Choose a stream: Loading tag 1 @ 00010ee0 Tag contents: 24 54 41 47 24 00 00 00 00 00 65 31 30 30 30 20 TAG block count = 0
Welcome to elfboot, the open sourced starter. January 2002, Eric Biederman. Version 1.2
Cannot Load ELF Image
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
On Sat, 23 Aug 2003, steven james wrote:
I need to add a tag generator in there! The newer baremetal is breaking with ide.c from the freebios/src tree. I'm looking at that, but in the meantime, you can change util/baremetal/lib/Makefile to skip ide.c and it will compile (minus ide support of course).
let me know when fixed. I want to try this out.
ron
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Adam Agnew -
Jeff Noxon -
Nathanael Noblet -
ron minnich -
steven james