[LinuxBIOS] Comes up but cant see CMOS prompt or options

[Dan Mezynski]

On 7/27/06, Richard Smith <smithbone at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 7/26/06, Dan Mezynski <danmez at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >  I was able to setup config to include VGA bios and it seems to work but
> it
> > happens late in the flow, so a lot of printk messaages are not seen,
> they
> > only become visable after calling dev_initialize().
> >
> >  2 questions:
> >  * How can I get it so early printk messages come up?
>
> How are you doing video init?  If linuxbios is doing it then it should
> be done long before the kernel loads.


After groping around for awhile, with no text output from LB, I came upon
the nice document  on the website under "port guides"/"VGA support" which
detailed the procedure for combining the quartet.rom file with a
vga.romfile and this allowed me to see some text output from the LB
printk_notice
messages, but none of the printk_notice messages come before the call to
dev_initialize() which is called late in the hardwaremain() routine.  BTW
there is a coment in the beginning of hardwaremain() that says:

 /* displayinit MUST PRECEDE ALL PRINTK! */
        console_init();

But this call does not seem to do all that's needed to get
printk(printk_notice) messages to come to the console.

Note that I'm not yet getting Linux booted, I would love to get that far, it
just gets to elfboot then says:
Could not find a bouce buffer...
Cannot Load ELF Image

>  * Shouldnt there be an option to hit f-10 or some other key to get into
> > CMOS?
>
> 2 invalid assumptions.   There may be no CMOS or keyboard.


My goal was to play with the boot order, to boot from CD, to try to get
Linux to boot from LB.  I see that there is a reference to  cmos.layout in
src/config/Config.lb which  shows  option_table.c as dependent on
cmos.layout,  so  if an acceptable way to set boot order etc is to hand edit
the cmos.layout file then that's fine, I just need understand it better.
This file has the following snipet:
#start-bit length  config config-ID    name
.
.
.
416          4       e       7        boot_first
420          4       e       7        boot_second
424          4       e       7        boot_third
But I'm not sure what to do here, any suggestions?  Should I edit this
file?  How do I make the CD or floppy the first boot?  Is there
documentation on this?

Note that the mainboard/.../Options.lb file has HAVE_OPTION_TABLE=1
so I assume this means it's using the cmos.layout file.  Is this true?


--
> Richard A. Smith
>
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