Hi, I'm new to this so be nice to me. I've been tempted in, amongst other things, by the supposed fast booting. Unfortunately I don't have an officially supported board. http://www.hardware.info/en-US/productdb/bGRkZJiTmJHK/viewproduct/Dell_Inspi...
From the above link, and other knowledge of my laptop I found: CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo - 1.6GHz Northbridge: Intel 945PM Southbridge: Intel ICH7M
On the site it claims that Dell get all their laptops made by either Quantas or Compal. I don't know if this is out of date, but following links told me to run dmidecode, which claims I have a motherboard, chassis etc made by Dell.
I do not yet know anything about Super I/O or my current BIOS as google has brought up little and I'll have to take the screwdriver out again. Your FAQ also asks for lspci output which I will add at the end.
I was wondering how feasable this would be on my laptop. My laptop doesn't have a floppy drive so I can't even hope to reflash the BIOS if everything goes pear-shaped can I? Or will a USB Floppy work even with a dud BIOS?
I have already told my LUG about this and a few are very interested.
Thanks in advance Nistur
[nistur@minas-morgul ~]$ lspci 00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/PM/GMS, 943/940GML and 945GT Express Memory Controller Hub (rev 03) 00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/PM/GMS, 943/940GML and 945GT Express PCI Express Root Port (rev 03) 00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) High Definition Audio Controller (rev 01) 00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 01) 00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 4 (rev 01) 00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 01) 00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 01) 00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 01) 00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 01) 00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 01) 00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev e1) 00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801GBM (ICH7-M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 01) 00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801GBM/GHM (ICH7 Family) SATA IDE Controller (rev 01) 00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 01) 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc M52 [Mobility Radeon X1300] 03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4401-B0 100Base-TX (rev 02) 03:01.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd R5C832 IEEE 1394 Controller 03:01.1 Generic system peripheral [0805]: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Host Adapter (rev 19) 03:01.2 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C843 MMC Host Controller (rev 01) 03:01.3 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C592 Memory Stick Bus Host Adapter (rev 0a) 03:01.4 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd xD-Picture Card Controller (rev 05) 0b:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection (rev 02)
Hi Nistur,
On Fri, Oct 12, 2007 at 09:21:00AM +0100, Nistur wrote:
I was wondering how feasable this would be on my laptop.
Unfortunately not at all in the short term.
We don't have documentation that we need for any newer Intel chipsets and until we do, we're not likely to write the code.
Intel does not want to give out documentation to us flat out. There is various speculations on why, but either they don't want to help us compete with their EFI or they just think it's a waste of time since we won't make them any money in the short term.
We focus on working with AMD instead, since they do want to work with us and are an active supporter of the project we get results quicker.
My laptop doesn't have a floppy drive so I can't even hope to reflash the BIOS if everything goes pear-shaped can I? Or will a USB Floppy work even with a dud BIOS?
No floppy works if your boot flash chip is hosed. The only option is to reflash that flash chip outside your system.
(In another system, or in a standalone couple-hundred-dollar flash programmer.)
//Peter
On Fri, Oct 12, 2007 at 09:21:00AM +0100, Nistur wrote:
I have already told my LUG about this and a few are very interested.
Boards with AMD K8 and NVIDIA CK804 or MCP55 chipsets are good candidates, we could support such boards relatively easy with your help.
See http://linuxbios.org/Desktops for some candidates of boards which are not yet supported, but should be relatively easy if someone is willing to help testing patches on the actual hardware.
Uwe.
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Nistur -
Peter Stuge -
Uwe Hermann