Questions about LinuxBIOS

[Adam Nielsen]

Thanks for your reply, it was most helpful!

> Yes. A variety of NICs can be used with Etherboot as your payload.

Oh good, I was hoping that would be the case ;-)

You mention booting Windows 2000 on the web site, does this mean it would be 
possible to boot other OSes such as DOS?  It seems that it would be possible, 
except that a lot of BIOS calls DOS uses haven't been implemented yet - if 
these were implemented, would that be enough to boot DOS?

> > One of the motherboards has a recovery jumper
> No, the recovery jumper will program some factory presets into a factory
> BIOS. It does not act as a recovery BIOS.

Are you sure?  I'm not talking about the CMOS reset jumper - all the docs I've 
read about this feature say that can be used to recover from a failed flash 
attempt, as it contains the bare minimum code needed to boot a floppy (which 
then courtesy of AUTOEXEC.BAT runs the flash program.)  The docs say to wait 
for a certain series of beeps to indicate the flash was successful (as there 
is no video.)  From this description it seems that if I have a properly 
configured disk handy, then should the new LinuxBIOS decide not to work, I 
should be able to recover by reflashing my original BIOS.  When I last tried 
enabling the jumper, as soon as the motherboard powered up it started reading 
the floppy drive, continously (as I had no disk in there) until it was 
powered off again.

The only thing I remember reading was something about the BIOS boot block 
never being overwritten during an upgrade, so if the LinuxBIOS flash 
procedure does overwrite the boot block I guess this procedure wouldn't work.

And for what it's worth, I've only ever seen this on Intel motherboards (which 
have soldered flash chips.)

> Oh, then disregard what I said about getting a backup. Unless you switch
> projects and get a board with a removable ROM, of course :)

I actually have two boards, and one of them does have a removable ROM so 
that's ok ;-)  It actually seems to be quite similar to the Gigabyte GA-6BXC, 
which it seems you used to use (I have one of these boards too, but not for 
fiddling with ;-))

> Can you provide some more details about this specific board? Knowing the
> north/south bridge chipset would be most helpful in case Ron has easy
> answers for you.

Yes, I didn't want to bombard you with too much stuff the first time ;-)

Board 1: Unknown brand, P6LX-A+.

According to the manual it has an "Intel 82440LX (PAC)" and an "Intel 82371AB 
(PIIX4)".  It's running a Celeron 300A at the moment.  Googling for "P6LX-A+" 
is where I found most of the info.  I haven't seen any references to 440LX, 
but I'm somewhat hopeful on the PIIX4...  This board has a pretty standard 
socketed BIOS chip (seems the same physically as the GA-6BXC.)

Board 2: Intel, unknown model.

This is definitely an Intel board (looks like an Intel, has an Intel AA model 
number [AA 666761-205], etc.) but according to Intel it doesn't exist - I 
think that's because it's sold through Gateway - the BIOS comes up with a 
"Gateway 2000" logo, and the only info I could find was on Gateway's website.  
Information on the board itself is a little sketchy but it seems fairly 
modern for its time - it's only a P133, but it's ATX and uses SDRAM.  
Googling for "MBDSAC071AAWW" gives a little info about it.  I can't find a 
manual, so I'll just list some of the larger chips I can see... ;-)

Intel PCIset SB82437VX
Intel PCIset SB82371SB
Intel E28F002 \n BCT80 \n U7050566D (this is the surface mounted flash chip)
SMC FDC37C932FR

Hopefully that's enough for you to tell me there's no support for this one
yet ;-)

Thanks,
Adam.