[LinuxBIOS] Epia ML 5000 progress (sort of)

[Richard Smith]

> my use of LinuxBIOS.  Here's the gotcha: There's an EIGHT SECOND delay
> from power on (or reset switch) until the time LinuxBIOS sends anything
> to the serial port.  Anyone have any ideas about this one?

Yep.  I do. I'm pretty sure its the scan for the firewire device. 
Heres the  snip from a past thread on this.

=====================
Ok, first I have commented out enable_smbus(), for that there are
unreadable characters at the console and it takes the same time --> the
false way

Then I recognized the lines above in auto.c, which disable the Firewire
stuff, but The Epia-ML does not have Firewire, ok it is the same chipset
and the firewire is integrated in the chip, but voila it works.

I have commented out line 119-123 and all works fine on high speed :D
Is there a better way?
======================

Whats happening is that the PCI code does a complete PCI space lookup
looking for the firewire bridge which is not there.  Apparently thats
about 8 seconds.
So comment out the search for the firewire bridge in auto.c and retry.

I'm going to go a head and setup a new directory for the EPIA ML so we
can fix this properly.

Dunno about your VGA issues.  I seem to remember that there was only 1
version of the vbios that actually worked.  Check the archives.

--
Richard A. Smith