Flashing Bios Success...

[Nathanael Noblet]

Hello all,
	So I've been trying for quite some time to gain access to the bios of 
the SBC I'm using so I can start placing linuxbios on it. Unable to get 
flash_rom to work and devbios segfaulting in some pci detection 
functions I was a little stuck. I didn't have a floppy drive on that 
SBC so couldn't use the uniflash dos programmer. Well I have found a 
way to get a dos boot and the uniflasher working. I have saved the 
original bios to file, and then flashed a fresh bios with the saved 
bios and its all working great. So though I would love to get flash_rom 
working or devbios for that matter. So now I'd like to know how to 
proceed. I have a build that builds I really have no idea how 
functional it is, and I fully expect some bugs. What I would LIKE to do 
right now is flash the flash chip with linuxbios (ignoring the kernel 
for the moment) just to see if it initializes the serial output etc as 
I want it to. So I've looked over the HOWTOs for the other boards. My 
board has a DoC, but I don't want to use it yet.

So I assumed that I need to flash linuxbios or linuxbios.strip onto the 
flash. I tried, but uniflash gives me an error #100 unable to read 
file???

As well, my flash is 256K and the linuxbios is 24K... do I need to pad 
it? As well when I do the STD_FLASH,ROM_SIZE options and such the 
romimage is still 900K. I though originally that I would put the 
romimage on the flash.. it is obviously too big...

The last question I have is the boot block in the flash chip itself 
there are two 8K boot blocks at the beginning and end of the flash, 
does something specific go in that area of the flash?

So can anyone enlighten me on the next step?
-- 
Nathanael Noblet
Gnat Solutions
4604 Monterey Ave NW
Calgary, AB
T3B 5K4

T/F 403.288.5360
C 403.809.5368

http://www.gnat.ca/

[ron minnich]

the file you want is called romimage.

Try that.

ron

[Nathanael D. Noblet]

On Wed, 2003-04-30 at 10:38, ron minnich wrote:
> the file you want is called romimage.
> Ok but the file romimage is 900K and my flash is but a measly 256K here
> is my config file...

# Sample config file for Arbor PIA 671 SBC with DoC Millennium (as root)
# This will make a target directory of ./arbour
target arbor
mainboard arbor/pia-671
# Enable Serial Console for debugging
option SERIAL_CONSOLE=1
option TTYS0_BAUD=115200
option DEFAULT_CONSOLE_LOGLEVEL=9
#option DEBUG=1
 
# Use 256KB Standard Flash as Normal BIOS
#option RAMTEST=1
option USE_GENERIC_ROM=1
option STD_FLASH=1
#option ZKERNEL_START=0xfffc0000
option ROM_SIZE=262144

# use DOC MIL
#option USE_DOC_2000=1
#docipl northsouthbridge/sis/530/ipl.S
 
# Use the internal VGA frame buffer device
option HAVE_FRAMEBUFFER=1
 
# Path to your kernel (vmlinux)
linux /usr/src/linux
 
# Kernel command line parameters
commandline root=/dev/hda1 console=tty0 console=ttyS0

The other question I have is this, the linux /usr/src/linux line points
to my kernel, but I'm wondering, when I normally build a kernel I copy
from /usr/src/linux/arch/i386/boot/bzImage and not
/usr/src/linux/vmlinux so what exactly is the vmlinux part in /usr/src
and what is it used for? I mean I can see by using file that vmlinux us
a ELF File and all that, and bzImage is a x86 boot sector. but well, I
normally copy bzImage over and that is it... so don't know what the
vmlinux file is used for to tell you the truth, and up until now didn't
know it existed... Is that *supposed* to be the kernel I use to boot or
the vmlinux file? 

-- 
Nathanael D. Noblet <[e-mail]>
Gnat Solutions

[ron minnich]

On 30 Apr 2003, Nathanael D. Noblet wrote:
> On Wed, 2003-04-30 at 10:38, ron minnich wrote:
> > the file you want is called romimage.
> > Ok but the file romimage is 900K and my flash is but a measly 256K here
> > is my config file...

then you can't put a linux payload in there. You have to use etherboot. We 
don't have the quantum storage option working yet. :-)

ron

[Nathanael D. Noblet]

On Wed, 2003-04-30 at 13:27, ron minnich wrote:
> then you can't put a linux payload in there. You have to use etherboot. We 
> don't have the quantum storage option working yet. :-)

Right.

What I wanted to do was simply see if the initializations were working,
I guess it is probably smarter to just get it working properly in the
first place. This board has both the PLCC flash and a DoC. Most of the
configs I've seen replace the flash part with a DoC. So since I'm not
doing that, how do I go about flashing the flash part? Do I still use
etherboot to get the kernel and such from the DoC? If so where are the
docs for configuring etherboot for such a setup? I don't think I've seen
a config with both the standard flash AND a DoC... Are there any?
-- 
Nathanael D. Noblet <[e-mail]>
Gnat Solutions

[ron minnich]

On 30 Apr 2003, Nathanael D. Noblet wrote:
> What I wanted to do was simply see if the initializations were working,
> I guess it is probably smarter to just get it working properly in the
> first place. This board has both the PLCC flash and a DoC. Most of the
> configs I've seen replace the flash part with a DoC. So since I'm not
> doing that, how do I go about flashing the flash part? Do I still use
> etherboot to get the kernel and such from the DoC? If so where are the
> docs for configuring etherboot for such a setup? I don't think I've seen
> a config with both the standard flash AND a DoC... Are there any?

nowadays there are fewer and fewer DoC users. 

Let's get linuxbios working first for you and then talk about options. 

First we can try to solve the flash problem. I'm printing the manual now.

ron