June 2005 - OpenBIOS - mail.coreboot.org

newbie
by Douglas Frank Aug. 6, 2005

Aug. 6, 2005

Greetings all, I've just subscribed. I've been googling around for quite a while now, looking for an interesting project that isn't already almost done, and that isn't essentially closed to significant contributions from people outside whatever organization sponsors the project. That leaves out a lot of otherwise interesting projects-- such as the kernel trace work at opersys.com, or Fedora, or the crash-dump project (lkcd) just for a few examples. I confess I'm not just interested in "open source" for any altruistic reason-- I'm really looking for a way to establish credentials in the OS "community" (a much-overused word). I bet such be will be increasingly important in future years. A little context: I'm using Fedora (FC3) here at work (nobody seems to mind that I can't read half of HP's internal web pages, which mostly only work right with IE; and I *certainly* don't mind! :-) I naturally poked around Redhat's site looking for Fedora work, but all they really offer is a bugzilla listing. 98% of reported FC bugs are either with badly outdated releases, or expansion hardware I don't have. However there *does* seem to be an issue with FC3 and the 2.6.11 kernel-- with several reports of solid system hangs/lockups, where the computer essentially freezes in place. Now on an Alpha, all you'd have to do is hit the halt button, type "cra" at the ">>>" prompt, and reboot; once in multiuser you'll have a crash dump waiting for your debugging pleasure. But I've never seen the PC that had a halt button that didn't instantly put you in POST, which kinda limits the chances of copying memory to the swap partition. So at least on the PC architecture, there doesn't seem to be a reliable way to do a postmortem on a wedged kernel. Obviously, the BIOS is a problem. Which leads me to you. What needs doing? thanks! -- Douglas Frank HP Co. ZKO 110 Spit Brook Rd. The older I get, 603-884-0501 Nashua, NH USA 03062 the better I was.

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interesting: IBM's "Open source Slimline Open Firmware"
by Brian Sammon July 1, 2005

July 1, 2005

http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/power/library/pa-dw-slof.html

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chipset info [please, need docs]
by Gordon Freeman June 29, 2005

June 29, 2005

Hi, i saw that you're writing an OpenBIOS. I like to write hardware management code but i'm not ready for writing code for an "organized project" :D However i'd like to management my chipset (sis645+sis961) but after months of search i have not found the datasheet or other technical doc. I wrote to SiS, ECS (which produce my mother board) but i'm a private (and mainly i'm a single person) so they simply never answer me. If you want to write OpenBIOS you need to management chipset, how do you do this? I have, for example, intel chipset datasheet but i don't think that this is useful for me. THE QUESTION SO IS: have you sis645 datasheet or any sis datasheet? I don't undestand why is possible to buy hardware without datasheet... I'd like to use (and for "to use" i mean "to program") full capabilites of my chipset, i'd like to write my own SMI handler, to allow read-write from 0a0000h-0fffffh and the other configurations that may damage my hardware :D I hope someone answear me. I thank every one who has read this message. Kee Nemesis 241, gorfrman(a)virgilio.it

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