Was a newbie, now a polliwog

[Thomas Fritz]

I became interested in linuxbios a while back, and while I've subscribed 
to this list I've never done anything with it.

I've learned quite a bit more since then, and I'm even working on 
reading the Linux From Scatch book.

I've come back around to it again, for two reasons...I have a working 
laptop (IBM TP 390X), and an extra mainboard for the laptop.  I have to 
do a password recovery on mainboard, but I was thinking if I'm going to 
go through the trouble, I would like to try something with it. 
Especially with the TSSOP flash bios chip within easy reach :)

The other reason...I've been looking at embedded applications lately, 
and I don't really feel like going the DIY hardware route...since I have 
access to a surplus source of IBM thin clients (403GCX PPC, PC87303 
SuperIO, S3 Trio64V+ video, single PCMCIA slot, two EDO SIMM slots, 
parport, serial, mouse/keybd, DP83907 ATLANTIC II ethernet, and a 
whopping 512KB AM29F040 flash bios), which have everything I could want, 
except USB, which a PCMCIA card could fix.

What I want to do with one of the thin clients is put on linuxbios, and 
since I would be using the PCMCIA for USB, boot a compact system off of 
a USB memory stick.

I was wondering how far along things have come, and if anyone has done 
something like the USB booting, or even what other devices linuxbios can 
boot a system off of?

Also, after reading about all that's been done with the X-box project, 
and the mod chips they sell, I was wondering if anyone has had any 
thoughts on something like the Xenium X-box mod chip?

[Hendricks David W.]

I figure now might be a good time to remind readers that LANL personnel 
(Ron Minnich, Ollie Lho, Greg Watson, and myself) on this list are 
currently unable to respond to inquiries on this mailing list due to a 
lab-wide stand down. You can read more about it here: 
http://www.lamonitor.com/articles/2004/07/19/headline_news/news08.txt

We try to be responsive and helpful, but this is impossible for now and 
the immediate future. Fortunately there are several other helpful readers 
on this mailing list who can help. I just don't want anyone 
thinking that the LANL guys are blowing this list off or anything like 
that (Especially since the recent Slashdot article might spur some more 
interest in this project).

On Thu, 22 Jul 2004, Thomas Fritz wrote:
> I became interested in linuxbios a while back, and while I've subscribed 
> to this list I've never done anything with it.
>
> I've learned quite a bit more since then, and I'm even working on 
> reading the Linux From Scatch book.
>
> I've come back around to it again, for two reasons...I have a working 
> laptop (IBM TP 390X), and an extra mainboard for the laptop.  I have to 
> do a password recovery on mainboard, but I was thinking if I'm going to 
> go through the trouble, I would like to try something with it. 
> Especially with the TSSOP flash bios chip within easy reach :)
>
> The other reason...I've been looking at embedded applications lately, 
> and I don't really feel like going the DIY hardware route...since I have 
> access to a surplus source of IBM thin clients (403GCX PPC, PC87303 
> SuperIO, S3 Trio64V+ video, single PCMCIA slot, two EDO SIMM slots, 
> parport, serial, mouse/keybd, DP83907 ATLANTIC II ethernet, and a 
> whopping 512KB AM29F040 flash bios), which have everything I could want, 
> except USB, which a PCMCIA card could fix.
>
> What I want to do with one of the thin clients is put on linuxbios, and 
> since I would be using the PCMCIA for USB, boot a compact system off of 
> a USB memory stick.
>
> I was wondering how far along things have come, and if anyone has done 
> something like the USB booting, or even what other devices linuxbios can 
> boot a system off of?
>
> Also, after reading about all that's been done with the X-box project, 
> and the mod chips they sell, I was wondering if anyone has had any 
> thoughts on something like the Xenium X-box mod chip?
> _______________________________________________
> Linuxbios mailing list
> [e-mail]
> http://www.clustermatic.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxbios

[Richard Smith]

Thomas Fritz wrote:
> What I want to do with one of the thin clients is put on linuxbios, and 
> since I would be using the PCMCIA for USB, boot a compact system off of 
> a USB memory stick.

The PCMCIA is a problem.  PCMCIA cardservices is a big beast.  Linuxbios 
dosen't currently do PCMCIA.

I created a setup with one of our boards that net booted via a PCMCIA 
wireless card.  To make that happen I had to boot a linux kernel and 
then kexec into my netbooted image.

At that time kernel cardservices would not do our wifi card and I had to 
use pcmcia-cs.  Compiling a only the necessary programs from pcmcia-cs 
against uclibc I was able to get a kernel+initrd down to just less than 
a meg.  Our board has 2 29F040b's on it (designed with this in mind) so 
I got it all on board.  Took work though.

If you use 2.6.x and the set of tiny patches that allows you rips out 
most of the features that make it large you _might_ get down to less 
512k  Probally going to be tight though.

This route has be talked about but I don't think anyone has ever seen 
how small you can get 2.6.x with the tiny1 patches.

Eric B. mentioned that he was going to play with this someday but I 
don't know if he ever did.

Here's the link for the tiny1 tree.  Give it a whirl and report back 
what you find.  Using Linux as the bootloader is the holy grail of 
linuxbios booting.

http://www.selenic.com/tiny-about/