Hello, (second try)
I'm planning to build my own car mp3 player on a PC basis and now found out that the VIA epia boards seem to be supported by linuxbios. I'd love to boot my mp3 player via linuxbios to get the music playing asap... unfortunatly the linuxbios-docs are not very userfriendly - I understand that it's possible to boot the epia boards via etherboot, but can i also load a kernel from IDE devices, e.g. a compact flash card mounted into a IDE compact flash drive? If not - is there any other way to load a linux-kernel really FAST in a EPIA standalone (car-) system?
Would you recommand a special board, such as the EPIA-V8000, or are they all working well?
Thanks a lot for your help,
Hubert --- hubert@denkmair.de
The only EPIA boards working close to 100% right now are the original series, which is fine for your car MP3 project. I'd suggest the fanless 533 MHz model.
Please read the mailing list archives. It should be possible to use some adapters to support a DiskOnChip with the EPIA board. Etherboot can also boot from IDE devices, including CF adapters. Etherboot 5.2.0 can do that without any patches (or so it would seem.)
I've found it helpful to download the entire mailing list archive (a huge file) and use grepmail to search for answers.
Regards,
Jeff
On Sat, Aug 23, 2003 at 07:55:58PM +0200, Hubert Denkmair wrote:
Hello, (second try)
I'm planning to build my own car mp3 player on a PC basis and now found out that the VIA epia boards seem to be supported by linuxbios. I'd love to boot my mp3 player via linuxbios to get the music playing asap... unfortunatly the linuxbios-docs are not very userfriendly - I understand that it's possible to boot the epia boards via etherboot, but can i also load a kernel from IDE devices, e.g. a compact flash card mounted into a IDE compact flash drive? If not - is there any other way to load a linux-kernel really FAST in a EPIA standalone (car-) system?
Would you recommand a special board, such as the EPIA-V8000, or are they all working well?
Thanks a lot for your help,
On Sat, 23 Aug 2003 19:55:58 +0200 Hubert Denkmair linuxbios@denkmair.de wrote:
I'm planning to build my own car mp3 player on a PC basis and now found out that the VIA epia boards seem to be supported by linuxbios.
Why PC? theres some lovely *tiny* ARM based boards out there that are far better suited to the task...
Sure, and they're damn expensive. EPIA is dirt cheap. (And crap too, but sometimes price wins anyway. ;)
Unless you know of a sub-$125 ARM-based board? /dreaming
Regards,
Jeff
On Mon, Aug 25, 2003 at 12:39:56AM +0100, Ian Molton wrote:
On Sat, 23 Aug 2003 19:55:58 +0200 Hubert Denkmair linuxbios@denkmair.de wrote:
I'm planning to build my own car mp3 player on a PC basis and now found out that the VIA epia boards seem to be supported by linuxbios.
Why PC? theres some lovely *tiny* ARM based boards out there that are far better suited to the task...
On Sun, 24 Aug 2003, Jeff Noxon wrote:
Sure, and they're damn expensive. EPIA is dirt cheap. (And crap too, but sometimes price wins anyway. ;)
it's not that crappy.
Unless you know of a sub-$125 ARM-based board? /dreaming
All the things that should be cheap, it seems, are not cheap. I just saw an add for an 8-bit, 16-bit address space Zilog Z80, running at 50 Mhz, for $199 -- 2x the whole EPIA!
ron
Etherboot can boot a kernel from an IDE device as well as a floppy or over a network.
Have you checked the freebios/HOWTO/EPIA file? That should help get you started. To get it working from an IDE device, The basic procedure should go something like this: 0) Consider investing in a BIOS Savior device in case something goes wrong. 1) Modify the epia.config.example file to use IDE--Add the line "option BOOT_IDE=1" somewhere in there, maybe some other stuff Sone Takeshi or Andrew Ip or some others around here can help you with. Here's an old one from Sone that I haven't defiled: http://www.flagen.com/~sc/linux/lb/epia/epia.config.sone 2a) Download Etherboot ( etherboot.sf.net ) Build a working etherboot payload (Should be ide_disk in the etherboot/src/bin directory after you 'make' etherboot). 2b) Build LinuxBIOS with that python command described in freebios/HOWTO/EPIA and run 'make' in the target directory to build your romimage. 2c) Burn the romimage to the EPIA flash chip using the flash_write utility (Under /freebios/util/flash_and_burn). 3) Build kernel for EPIA. 4) Use mkelfImage ( ftp://lnxi.com/pub/mkelfImage/ ) on your kernel image. 5) Format your IDE device with FAT 6) Write your elfImage to the IDE device like so: dd if=elfImage of=/dev/your_compactflash_device bs=1024 seek=4 7) Test it out, fail, and have someone with more expertise explain this to you in further (And more correct) detail :)
If all else fails, you can try this ROM: http://www.flagen.com/~sc/linux/lb/epia/epia-ide.andrew.rom . It's an old one from Andrew Ip, the l33t master. If it doesn't work, at least you can use it as a proof of concept to figure if this whole ordeal is worthwhile for your needs.
Hello, (second try)
I'm planning to build my own car mp3 player on a PC basis and now found out that the VIA epia boards seem to be supported by linuxbios. I'd love to boot my mp3 player via linuxbios to get the music playing asap... unfortunatly the linuxbios-docs are not very userfriendly - I understand that it's possible to boot the epia boards via etherboot, but can i also load a kernel from IDE devices, e.g. a compact flash card mounted into a IDE compact flash drive? If not - is there any other way to load a linux-kernel really FAST in a EPIA standalone (car-) system?
Would you recommand a special board, such as the EPIA-V8000, or are they all working well?
Thanks a lot for your help,
Hubert
hubert@denkmair.de
Linuxbios mailing list Linuxbios@clustermatic.org http://www.clustermatic.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxbios
-
David Hendricks -
Hubert Denkmair -
Ian Molton -
Jeff Noxon -
ron minnich