freebios2 mod to reset code.

[ron minnich]

On Wed, 23 Jul 2003, Steve Gehlbach wrote:

> I suggested this last year, with the comment that this is a more 
> traditional way that embedded systems start up.  Your objections at the 
> time were that it would cause trouble with some motherboards, but I 
> don't remember the specifics.  I was wanting to do this since it is 
> clear that we will be getting 2 Mbyte LPC soon and be able to boot 
> Linux easily out of flash (as I think you have already done).

you have an inconvenient memory: you were right and I was wrong :-)


> One caveat I discovered, I could never get Linux to boot with a gdt 
> located higher than 1M.  So even if you put a linux compatible gdt high, 
> it has to be moved to ram < 1M or linux hangs on boot.  Never figured 
> out why (true for 2.4 anyway).

we're not seeing this. We have GDTs in very high memory and it all works. 
Interesting.

> Also, on the dynamic/static trees, one thing to consider in the mix is 
> the serial ATA.  I think it is an external chip now but will be subsumed 
> into the bridge chips at some point.  Not sure how a chip function 
> moving around like this affects the software design.

I think it might work. On the Acer, the IDE controller has always been in 
that static initialization. In fact, the superio architecture was 
motivated by the acer chip.

ron