### coreboot, geode lx

[Steve Spano]

Hello folks,

We have developed - basically a clone of the DB800 Amd Geode LX800
reference system.

We have an LX800, CS5536, SST04 LPC Flash (512KB) and a compact flash
card - 1GB.

The system is booting Ubuntu 6.10 using a commercial BIOS.

I have downloaded the corebios and wish to get it running on our board.
I have been able to download it, configured with FILO and its almost
working.

What I want it to do is boot into the GRUB sector of the compact flash
card and then allow grub to let me select what linux kernel/etc to boot.

When corebios loads FILO, filo says "mounting FAT" and it cannot find
our grub sectors/etc on the compact flash card. Shouldn't this be EXT2
that it mounts.

I have adjusted the configs for FILO to attempt to remove FAT, but it
still keeps coming up. Seems like I a missing something pretty simple.

Can anyone point me to a reference on how to configure the latest
corebios/FILO package to boot into an IDE compact flash (the compact
flash card is right on the IDE bus of the CS5536).

Also - doesn't have to be FILO. I saw etherboot can boot to IDE as well.
I just want a BIOS so I can alter the memory timings/etc and jump to my
compact flash card for booting. So whatever is easiest.

Thank you

Steve Spano, President

Finger Lakes Engineering

Quoting Steve Spano :
> Hello folks,
>
> We have developed - basically a clone of the DB800 Amd Geode LX800
> reference system.
>
> We have an LX800, CS5536, SST04 LPC Flash (512KB) and a compact flash
> card - 1GB.
>
> The system is booting Ubuntu 6.10 using a commercial BIOS.
>
> I have downloaded the corebios and wish to get it running on our board.
> I have been able to download it, configured with FILO and its almost
> working.
>
> What I want it to do is boot into the GRUB sector of the compact flash
> card and then allow grub to let me select what linux kernel/etc to boot.
>
> When corebios loads FILO, filo says "mounting FAT" and it cannot find
> our grub sectors/etc on the compact flash card. Shouldn't this be EXT2
> that it mounts.

Can you confirm this is was partitioned as ext2?
> I have adjusted the configs for FILO to attempt to remove FAT, but it
> still keeps coming up. Seems like I a missing something pretty simple.

Maybe the MBR on your CF card has a fat partition entry on it?
you can try wiping the mbr with dd:
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=512 count=1
But be warned dd can be dangerous so be careful.
> Can anyone point me to a reference on how to configure the latest
> corebios/FILO package to boot into an IDE compact flash (the compact
> flash card is right on the IDE bus of the CS5536).

Doesn't it just show up as a drive?
> Also - doesn't have to be FILO. I saw etherboot can boot to IDE as well.
> I just want a BIOS so I can alter the memory timings/etc and jump to my
> compact flash card for booting. So whatever is easiest.

Etherboot works too, but only upto version 5.2.6

Hope that helps.

Thanks - Joe

[Steve Spano]

Hi Joe

Thanks for the reply.

The compact flash card does show up as a regular disk; under the
commercial BIOS.

I'll get a new card tomorrow and wipe it clean and reinstall, see if
that gets it going.

So basically, if FILO is in coreboot - it will look at the MBR and
decide on what filesystem it should attempt to mount?

Anyone know of an LPC flash emulator so its easier to develop the BIOS
code - rather than plugging/unplugging flash chips all the time?

Thanks

Steve Spano, President
Finger Lakes Engineering

-----Original Message-----
From: [e-mail]
[mailto:[e-mail]] On Behalf Of
[e-mail]
Sent: Tuesday, February 26, 2008 9:29 PM
To: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: [coreboot] ### coreboot, geode lx

Quoting Steve Spano :
> Hello folks,
>
> We have developed - basically a clone of the DB800 Amd Geode LX800
> reference system.
>
> We have an LX800, CS5536, SST04 LPC Flash (512KB) and a compact flash
> card - 1GB.
>
> The system is booting Ubuntu 6.10 using a commercial BIOS.
>
> I have downloaded the corebios and wish to get it running on our

board.
> I have been able to download it, configured with FILO and its almost
> working.
>
> What I want it to do is boot into the GRUB sector of the compact flash
> card and then allow grub to let me select what linux kernel/etc to

boot.
> When corebios loads FILO, filo says "mounting FAT" and it cannot find
> our grub sectors/etc on the compact flash card. Shouldn't this be EXT2
> that it mounts.

Can you confirm this is was partitioned as ext2?
> I have adjusted the configs for FILO to attempt to remove FAT, but it
> still keeps coming up. Seems like I a missing something pretty simple.

Maybe the MBR on your CF card has a fat partition entry on it?
you can try wiping the mbr with dd:
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=512 count=1
But be warned dd can be dangerous so be careful.
> Can anyone point me to a reference on how to configure the latest
> corebios/FILO package to boot into an IDE compact flash (the compact
> flash card is right on the IDE bus of the CS5536).

Doesn't it just show up as a drive?
> Also - doesn't have to be FILO. I saw etherboot can boot to IDE as

well.
> I just want a BIOS so I can alter the memory timings/etc and jump to

my
> compact flash card for booting. So whatever is easiest.

Etherboot works too, but only upto version 5.2.6

Hope that helps.

Thanks - Joe

[Ward Vandewege]

Hi Steve,

On Tue, Feb 26, 2008 at 10:06:39PM -0500, Steve Spano wrote:
> Thanks for the reply.
>
> The compact flash card does show up as a regular disk; under the
> commercial BIOS.
>
> I'll get a new card tomorrow and wipe it clean and reinstall, see if
> that gets it going.

Make sure to delete the partition table before you reformat it as ext3. I've
found that's necessary to make Grub do the right thing.

I wasted some time a while back having just reformatted the FAT partition as
ext3 - Grub would not boot until I wiped the partition table and then created
a new ext3 table.
> Anyone know of an LPC flash emulator so its easier to develop the BIOS
> code - rather than plugging/unplugging flash chips all the time?

Do you have an LPC header? If so, you could look at the artecgroup dongle.

http://www.coreboot.org/Artecgroup_programmable_LPC_dongle

Thanks,
Ward.

[Steve Spano]

Hello

Thanks for the tips Ward

So you suggest dd'ing the card to all zeros.
Then reinstalling grub/ext3 partition - and that should work with the
"stock" filo/etherboot code in the corebios?

Thanks

Steve Spano, President
Finger Lakes Engineering

-----Original Message-----
From: [e-mail]
[mailto:[e-mail]] On Behalf Of Ward Vandewege
Sent: Tuesday, February 26, 2008 10:15 PM
To: Steve Spano
Cc: [e-mail]; [e-mail]
Subject: Re: [coreboot] ### coreboot, geode lx

Hi Steve,

On Tue, Feb 26, 2008 at 10:06:39PM -0500, Steve Spano wrote:
> Thanks for the reply.
>
> The compact flash card does show up as a regular disk; under the
> commercial BIOS.
>
> I'll get a new card tomorrow and wipe it clean and reinstall, see if
> that gets it going.

Make sure to delete the partition table before you reformat it as ext3.
I've
found that's necessary to make Grub do the right thing.

I wasted some time a while back having just reformatted the FAT
partition as
ext3 - Grub would not boot until I wiped the partition table and then
created
a new ext3 table.
> Anyone know of an LPC flash emulator so its easier to develop the BIOS
> code - rather than plugging/unplugging flash chips all the time?

Do you have an LPC header? If so, you could look at the artecgroup
dongle.

http://www.coreboot.org/Artecgroup_programmable_LPC_dongle

Thanks,
Ward.

[Ward Vandewege]

On Tue, Feb 26, 2008 at 10:19:36PM -0500, Steve Spano wrote:
> So you suggest dd'ing the card to all zeros.
> Then reinstalling grub/ext3 partition - and that should work with the
> "stock" filo/etherboot code in the corebios?

If everything is properly configured, hopefully :)

I didn't even dd the card; I just used fdisk to delete all partitions, saved,
quit fdisk, and then restarted fdisk to create a new ext3 partition, iirc.

Seems like a quick thing to try to rule out silly problems.

Since you're using filo, you don't even need to have grub installed in the
MBR on the card (well, unless you want to use grub from the proprietary bios,
that is!). Filo won't care about that - it just needs to find the first
partition to load your kernel.

Thanks,
Ward.

[David H. Barr]

On Tue, Feb 26, 2008 at 9:19 PM, Steve Spano  wrote:
> So you suggest dd'ing the card to all zeros.
> Then reinstalling grub/ext3 partition - and that should work with the
> "stock" filo/etherboot code in the corebios?

Not really necessary to dd the whole card to zero, even if you take
this route -- I blast 1 MB of zeroes, and it effectively takes care of
MBR, weird partitions that don't respect fdisk, and so forth.
Probably only a few KB of that are even necessary, but 1 MB is nice
and easy to remember.

HTH,
-dhbarr.

[Steve Spano]

Hi There,

Thanks for the help yesterday; I have made a new compact flash card and
can 'boot' my linux 6.10 using corebios+filo.

However, I do not have a video display for some reason. If I use the
commercial bios, linux has a video display.

How can I enable a basic text video display in corebios? I have tried
setting the config_vt; but that didn't see to do it.

Thank you

Steve Spano, President
Finger Lakes Engineering

-----Original Message-----
From: [e-mail]
[mailto:[e-mail]] On Behalf Of David H. Barr
Sent: Tuesday, February 26, 2008 11:41 PM
To: [e-mail]
Cc: Steve Spano
Subject: Re: [coreboot] ### coreboot, geode lx

On Tue, Feb 26, 2008 at 9:19 PM, Steve Spano  wrote:
> So you suggest dd'ing the card to all zeros.
> Then reinstalling grub/ext3 partition - and that should work with the
> "stock" filo/etherboot code in the corebios?

Not really necessary to dd the whole card to zero, even if you take
this route -- I blast 1 MB of zeroes, and it effectively takes care of
MBR, weird partitions that don't respect fdisk, and so forth.
Probably only a few KB of that are even necessary, but 1 MB is nice
and easy to remember.

HTH,
-dhbarr.

[ron minnich]

Where's the VGA BIOS for the board? On a card or in the BIOS image or
in some seperate part?

ron

[Steve Spano]

Hello

I got my working on the LX board. I had to port in the GeodeLX frame
buffer driver into the 2.6.17 kernel that I am using. The port went
AMAZINGLY smooth.

I am totally 10000% impressed with the coreboot technology. Very very
slick

Thanks

Steve Spano, President
Finger Lakes Engineering

-----Original Message-----
From: [e-mail]
[mailto:[e-mail]] On Behalf Of ron minnich
Sent: Thursday, February 28, 2008 12:30 AM
To: Steve Spano
Cc: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: [coreboot] ### coreboot, geode lx

Where's the VGA BIOS for the board? On a card or in the BIOS image or
in some seperate part?

ron

[ron minnich]

On Wed, Feb 27, 2008 at 11:34 PM, Steve Spano  wrote:
> I am totally 10000% impressed with the coreboot technology. Very very
>  slick

geez, we oughtta put this on the web page :-)

ron

[Jordan Crouse]

On 27/02/08 21:30 -0800, ron minnich wrote:
> Where's the VGA BIOS for the board? On a card or in the BIOS image or
> in some seperate part?

Ron - this is the Geode, remember?  No VBIOS with coreboot.  :)

Steve - so you know, AMD doesn't own the rights to freely distribute
the video BIOS that comes with the commercial BIOS solutions.  So,
we don't have any video BIOS support (VGA) when running coreboot.

You got it exactly right in your other email.  The framebuffer
console takes the place of the VGA console when booting Linux from
coreboot. Its just as good, and you get more video modes to work with.

Congratulations on a successful boot.

Jordan