Is 440BX ported to Linuxbios v2?

[Svante Signell]

On Thu, 2005-01-13 at 16:23 -0600, Richard Smith wrote:
> On Thu, 13 Jan 2005 14:59:08 -0700 (MST), Ronald G. Minnich
> <rminnich at lanl.gov> wrote:
> > 
> > 
> > On Thu, 13 Jan 2005, Svante Signell wrote:
> > 
> > > I found the BIOS chip brand and version: Its a Winbond W290C020-90
> > 
> > a nice common safe part. Try hamilton-avnet or arrow. WARNING: when you
> > call them, use the EXACT part #. Their databases are not able to do fuzzy
> > logic.
> 
> http://www.digikey.com is your friend.
> 
> Well really almost any JDEC part 2MBits and larger will work.  If you
> use a larger part you might have to ground the unused address lines if
> they left them floating on the pcb.

Thanks for the links. No luck with any of the links given, however. How
to find a replacement part?

> > 
> > no idea on the FSB settings -- I think linuxbios always goes with the
> > fastest :-)
> 
> The FSB is set via the clock chip.  The clock chip we have is set via
> straps.  I'm not sure what your commercial bios is doing but the 440bx
> is not rated for over 100Mhz.  So those other settings are
> overclockings.  And they will change the speed of your PCI bus as
> well.

I know about the 100MHz rating for 440BX. However, on the board you can
select 66/100 MHz FSB and the BIOS supports the higher FSB speeds. Also
the board has multiplier settings (3-5) x (66,100) MHz = 200-500 MHz for
CPUs with changable clock multipliers. The board runs today with dual
Celeron (Mendocino, 300MHz, before Intel disabled dual on Celerons) at
103/66*300MHz = 466MHz stably for many years now.
 
BTW: The memories I have installed are all PC133 parts.

> I suspect your board has a small microcontroller on it with eeprom
> that sets the strap settings on boot and then de-asserts reset.  That
> or it boots in 66Mhz and then sets the clock chip after that.
> 
> Anybody know what clock chip is on that board?

Where to look for that chip?

The board also has a system manager jumper: Selectable between the
SuperIO chip (default) vs. the PIIX4E (southbridge). Wht is the meaning
of this choice?

I have the board description in pdf-format available if someone is
interested.

-- 
Svante Signell <svante.signell at telia.com>