[LinuxBIOS] Support for Intel Little Valley

[Michael Ost]

Hi, list.

We are considering building a product around Intel's Little Valley 
mini-ITX motherboard, model D201GLY. Would we be able to use linuxbios 
on it? If development is required, are there folks who do that kind of 
programming that we could work with?

Thanks for any info. Cheers... mo

PS: If Ron Minnich is still active in this group, then greetings! I am 
David Kratzer's brother in law and you and I met a couple of years back 
at the lab and you gave me the tour.

===============================
Michael Ost, Software Architect
Muse Research, Inc.

[Peter Stuge]

Hi, Michael.

On Thu, Dec 06, 2007 at 12:35:40PM -0800, Michael Ost wrote:
> We are considering building a product around Intel's Little Valley
> mini-ITX motherboard, model D201GLY. Would we be able to use
> linuxbios on it?

SiS662+SiS964L - neither have existing support.

The southbridge SiS966 is supported, maybe it's close enough to be
usable.
> If development is required, are there folks who do that kind of
> programming that we could work with?

Yes. The problem is usually to find documentation from the chipset
vendor, but we've recentlyreceived nice contributions to the project
from SiS themselves so maybe that will not be a big problem here. :)
> PS: If Ron Minnich is still active in this group

He sure is.

//Peter

[Michael Ost]

Peter Stuge wrote:
> Hi, Michael.
>
> On Thu, Dec 06, 2007 at 12:35:40PM -0800, Michael Ost wrote:
> > We are considering building a product around Intel's Little Valley
> > mini-ITX motherboard, model D201GLY. Would we be able to use
> > linuxbios on it?
>
> SiS662+SiS964L - neither have existing support.
>
> The southbridge SiS966 is supported, maybe it's close enough to be
> usable.

We have some contacts at Intel, but not SiS. From the Linuxbios 
perspective that's the key company here, right?
> > If development is required, are there folks who do that kind of
> > programming that we could work with?
>
> Yes. The problem is usually to find documentation from the chipset
> vendor, but we've recentlyreceived nice contributions to the project
> from SiS themselves so maybe that will not be a big problem here. :)

We would be interested in getting a quote from someone capable for 
supporting this board. Any suggestions or contacts?

I was told that the BIOS chip is a 4-Mbit SPI flash device. Is that big 
enough to work with (512K)? Would we be able to fit any system 
diagnostics (fsck, memtest86), tools (bash) or network support (ssh, 
vnc) into that size?

- mo

Quoting Michael Ost :
> Peter Stuge wrote:
> > Hi, Michael.
> >
> > On Thu, Dec 06, 2007 at 12:35:40PM -0800, Michael Ost wrote:
> > > We are considering building a product around Intel's Little Valley
> > > mini-ITX motherboard, model D201GLY. Would we be able to use
> > > linuxbios on it?
> >
> > SiS662+SiS964L - neither have existing support.
> >
> > The southbridge SiS966 is supported, maybe it's close enough to be
> > usable.
>
> We have some contacts at Intel, but not SiS. From the Linuxbios
> perspective that's the key company here, right?
> > > If development is required, are there folks who do that kind of
> > > programming that we could work with?
> >
> > Yes. The problem is usually to find documentation from the chipset
> > vendor, but we've recentlyreceived nice contributions to the project
> > from SiS themselves so maybe that will not be a big problem here. :)
>
> We would be interested in getting a quote from someone capable for
> supporting this board. Any suggestions or contacts?
>
> I was told that the BIOS chip is a 4-Mbit SPI flash device. Is that big
> enough to work with (512K)? Would we be able to fit any system
> diagnostics (fsck, memtest86), tools (bash) or network support (ssh,
> vnc) into that size?
> mo

Ok if I jump in here? If you have some contacts at Intel, please  
utilize them. They are far and few between. There are a few SIS  
developers that help out with LB. Maybe they would be of more use?

A 512k chip is plenty big enough to fit LB+Payloads. I don't think you  
would be able to fit a whole LB+Payloads+kernel+minimalOS on it though.

Thanks - Joe

[Ward Vandewege]

On Sat, Dec 08, 2007 at 09:53:17AM -0500, [e-mail] wrote:
> A 512k chip is plenty big enough to fit LB+Payloads. I don't think you  
> would be able to fit a whole LB+Payloads+kernel+minimalOS on it though.

Indeed - for a minimal linux-as-a-bootloader setup, you currently need an
8Mbit chip.

I would advise at least a 16Mbit chip, otherwise you won't be able to fit
tcp/ip, usb, memtest, etc.

Thanks,
Ward.

[ron minnich]

On Dec 8, 2007 7:38 AM, Ward Vandewege  wrote:
> On Sat, Dec 08, 2007 at 09:53:17AM -0500, [e-mail] wrote:
> > A 512k chip is plenty big enough to fit LB+Payloads. I don't think you
> > would be able to fit a whole LB+Payloads+kernel+minimalOS on it though.
>
> Indeed - for a minimal linux-as-a-bootloader setup, you currently need an
> 8Mbit chip.

But don't get scared! If 8 Mbit is too large for you, you can still
get a lot done with FILO  in 256 Kbits.

ron