[LinuxBIOS] newbi questions for VIA EPIS MII6000E target

Hi all ... I'm about to make my first attempt to boot my MII6000E from the 
onboard CF adapter so pleas forgive my possibly stupid questions.

I have a few questions regarding this:
VIA's fartboot firmware tells me that it's mandatory to use mkelfImage on 
bothe kernel and initrd, is this also true for linuxBIOS ?
Even if vga bios is copied over from original flash will video be blank 
untill kernel initializes the video card or will it be possible to see the 
tipical "loading linux ......" and consequent tipical kernel messages on 
video ?
If the latter is possible would I need to avoid passing console to be 
serial amongst the kernel options ?
According to documentation on the linuxBIOS home
http://www.linuxbios.org/index.php/Payloads
the etherboot payload has bothe ide and net boot capabilities ... will 
this let me boot from the onboard CF adapter ?
What adjustments must I make to the EPIA-M-howto documentation to use the 
etherboot payload ?

Regards
David

[Ronald G Minnich]

[e-mail] wrote:
> Hi all ... I'm about to make my first attempt to boot my MII6000E from the 
> onboard CF adapter so pleas forgive my possibly stupid questions.
>
> I have a few questions regarding this:
> VIA's fartboot firmware tells me that it's mandatory to use mkelfImage on

^^^^^^^^
is this intentional :-)
> bothe kernel and initrd, is this also true for linuxBIOS ?

Yes. Claim is that fartboot is actually linuxbios; who knows?
> Even if vga bios is copied over from original flash will video be blank 
> untill kernel initializes the video card or will it be possible to see the 
> tipical "loading linux ......" and consequent tipical kernel messages on 
> video ?

if vga is enabled in linuxbios, you'll see all output.
> If the latter is possible would I need to avoid passing console to be 
> serial amongst the kernel options ?

yes.
> According to documentation on the linuxBIOS home
> http://www.linuxbios.org/index.php/Payloads
> the etherboot payload has bothe ide and net boot capabilities ... will 
> this let me boot from the onboard CF adapter ?

yes.
> What adjustments must I make to the EPIA-M-howto documentation to use the 
> etherboot payload ?

Someone else will have to answer that.

I can never get etherboot to build :-)

ron