openbios on nvram on l440gx+

[Ronald G. Minnich]

well, I have my first cut, and it failed.

It got to the sdram init and died. such is life ...

you can see the story at

www.acl.lanl.gov/linuxbios

ron

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hello.

[Kent Nyberg]

I think i need your help a bit.
I am trying to write a homepage on our local "Linux User Groupe" (wlug)
about the OpenBios project.
So if some one could send me a short introduction to this project or
give me an URL with information i would be very happy.
/Kent Nyberg.

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[David Christensen]

Ron,

Intel usually publishes a BIOS writer's guide for each set of chipsets it
develops.  These will describe in greater detail how to program the DRAM
registers based on the type of memory found, but you'll probably need to
sign an NDA to look at them.  If you're not interested in following that
route then the best thing to do would be to install a variety of SDRAMs (1
and 2 sided, various memory densities, and various combinations of DIMM
slots) and record the values you see in the different DRAM registers.  If
your using SDRAM with SPD data then you'll also need to read that EEPROM
data via I2C or the SMBUS, the memory sizing routine will need that data.
With this info you could draw up a chart with the different memory
configurations and DRAM register settings and you might even see a pattern
which you could use.  The tough part here is that all of this work has to be
done is a stackless environment.  You don't have any RAM to implement a
stack or make function calls!

You might also just hard code some values so that you can move past the
memory sizing to look at some other issues.

Just some thoughts.

Dave

-----Original Message-----
From: [e-mail]
[mailto:[e-mail]]On Behalf Of
Ronald G. Minnich
Sent: Friday, February 11, 2000 12:48 PM
To: [e-mail]
Subject: [OpenBIOS] openbios on nvram on l440gx+

well, I have my first cut, and it failed.

It got to the sdram init and died. such is life ...

you can see the story at

www.acl.lanl.gov/linuxbios

ron

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hello.

[Daniele Frijia]

On Sat, Feb 12, 2000 at 01:15:42AM +0100, Kent Nyberg wrote:
> I think i need your help a bit.
> I am trying to write a homepage on our local "Linux User Groupe" (wlug)
> about the OpenBios project.
> So if some one could send me a short introduction to this project or
> give me an URL with information i would be very happy.

Check out http://www.freiburg.linux.org/openbios/

openbios.org isn't still the domain for the project, but
we're working on it.

Regards, Daniele

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[Steve and Sue]

----- Original Message -----
From: David Christensen 
To: 
Sent: 12 February 2000 04:14
Subject: RE: [OpenBIOS] openbios on nvram on l440gx+
> Intel usually publishes a BIOS writer's guide for each set of chipsets it
> develops.  These will describe in greater detail how to program the DRAM
> registers based on the type of memory found, but you'll probably need to
> sign an NDA to look at them.

You will certainly need an NDA, but that assumes that Intel are going to let
you have the document in the first place. Where I work we tried to get BIOS
writer's guides for various Intel chips whithout much luck :-(
> your using SDRAM with SPD data then you'll also need to read that EEPROM
> data via I2C or the SMBUS, the memory sizing routine will need that data.

You don't have to read the SPD data to size memory; but it it sure makes the
job more easy. However you need to know how the motherboard selects the SPD
for the different DIMM slots. The DIMM itself usualy has an address of '0'.
> You might also just hard code some values so that you can move past the
> memory sizing to look at some other issues.

You will also have to initialize the SDRAM before you can use it, otherwise
you cannot write and just read junk.

Steve

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[Ronald G. Minnich]

Current plan is to dump the values of the dram control registers in the
bridge from linux. There is also an init sequence I'll have to write but
this looks pretty straightforward. I'll let someone else figure out
autosizing :-)

ron

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