[coreboot] Via EPIA-MII and linuxbios

[Corey Osgood]

On Sat, Aug 23, 2008 at 1:18 AM, bari <bari at onelabs.com> wrote:
> I'll pass this along to the list. Maybe someone will help you.
>>
>> Greg Chandler wrote:
>>>
>>> I was working on this board to get the Linuxbios going so I can use the
>>> PCMCIA bridge/CF working for boot, but have run into some snags with the
>>> document you wrote:
>>> http://www.coreboot.org/VIA_Epia-M%2C_MII_Build_Tutorial
>>>
>>> Here's a list of what I have found, and I'm wondering if you can help
>>> set me straight?
>>>
>>> {Note I am a fairly advanced hardware guy, have EEPROM programer in case
>>> I mess up, etc...}
>>>
>>> 1) {not a big deal}
>>> The doc claims that there are 2 firmware chips, yet on inspection of the
>>> board there is only one.  It is 256k and the flashrom util {once built}
>>> does read and verify it.
>>>
>>> What the other chip is, I have no idea, since neither the util nor I can
>>> actually find it.
>>>

The second chip they're talking about is probably a NIC rom, which
should be a small SPI chip somewhere near the southbridge. I don't
have that particular board, so I couldn't tell you for sure.

>>> 2) {also not a big deal}
>>> Filo config section doesn't have a list of the options, or caveats
>>> upfront about the cs_ide stuff.  There is a section later, but having to
>>> go back and rebuild is annoying.  Also listing USB_DISK=1 as an option
>>> would be helpfull since that is a supported method, and some of the
>>> users may be doing that to jumpstart the first board of many ;)
>>>

USB won't work on your board anyways, at least not last I knew. Only
OHCI (mostly geode-based southbridges) will work.

>>> 3) {big problem}
>>> The build when downloading the latest corev2 snapshot doesn't work.
>>> The Makefile is also no longer the same.
>>>
>>> The example listed, no longer exists for pre-pending the video bios,
>>> I've figured out what it should be now, but the tutorial is out of date.

Such is the problem with tutorials and moving targets. If you're up to
it, ask ron minnich or stepan for a wiki account, and you can fix the
tutorial (please!).

>>> The code also has hard paths coded to ~/svn/payload.elf
>>> in both the "fallbackMakefile" and "normal/Makefile" files.
>>>
>>> I'm not the expert I used to be, but that's pretty retarded for an
>>> assumption of where the files are going to be at build time...

There are two Config.lb files for the mainboard, one in
src/mainboard/via/epia-m/, the other in target/via/epia-m. The latter
should have a line in it that reads "payload ~/svn/payload.elf".
Modify that line to where your payload is, for both the normal and
fallback config. Then, you'll have to redo the buildtarget step (which
creates the makefiles) and then rebuild.

Both of these headaches are resolved with Kconfig in v3 :D

-Corey