[LinuxBIOS] GA M57SLI _really_ supported?

Torsten Duwe duwe at lst.de
Sat Oct 27 16:23:17 CEST 2007


On Saturday 27 October 2007, Carl-Daniel Hailfinger wrote:
> Besides that, there are still unexplained differences between vendor
> BIOS and LinuxBIOS in the PCI configuration.
>
> http://linuxbios.org/pipermail/linuxbios/2007-May/021538.html and the
> followup
> http://linuxbios.org/pipermail/linuxbios/2007-June/022299.html

As you already mentioned, legacy BIOS assigns resources downwards, while LB 
does it upwards. Some other differences might just be consecutive errors from 
the GPIO misconfig.

From my understanding we're talkin plain Linux here, not LinuxBIOS; if there's 
ACPI or the like, the kernel will use the described config. If not, Linux 
will (re-)configure the bridges itself. Bridges that seem to lead nowhere are 
assigned no resources.

>
> Oh, and here is a nice dmesg diff snippet:
>
> --- dmesg.vendor    2007-10-27 03:11:10.000000000 +0200
> +++ dmesg.LB    2007-10-27 03:11:10.000000000 +0200
>  PCI: Bridge: 0000:00:06.0
>    IO window: disabled.
> -  MEM window: fb000000-fb0fffff
> +  MEM window: disabled.
> Notice the disabled mem window. Fix.

PCI slots are dead due to the GPIO problem.
BTW firewire lives behind that bridge, too?

> +  PREFETCH window: disabled.
> +PCI: Bridge: 0000:00:0a.0
> +  IO window: disabled.
> +  MEM window: disabled.
> +  PREFETCH window: disabled.
> +PCI: Bridge: 0000:00:0b.0
> +  IO window: disabled.
> +  MEM window: disabled.
> +  PREFETCH window: disabled.
> +PCI: Bridge: 0000:00:0c.0
> +  IO window: disabled.
> +  MEM window: disabled.
> +  PREFETCH window: disabled.
> +PCI: Bridge: 0000:00:0d.0
> +  IO window: disabled.
> +  MEM window: disabled.
> +  PREFETCH window: disabled.
> +PCI: Bridge: 0000:00:0e.0
> +  IO window: disabled.
> +  MEM window: disabled.
>    PREFETCH window: disabled.
>
> Notice all these added PCI bridges. Fix.

These are the PCIe bridges. Do you have any cards in there, besides the 
primary graphics (0000:00:0f.0)? If not: see above. 

>  PCI: Bridge: 0000:00:0f.0
> -  IO window: 9000-9fff
> -  MEM window: f8000000-faffffff
> +  IO window: 1000-1fff
> +  MEM window: f4000000-f60fffff
>    PREFETCH window: e0000000-efffffff
> [...]

Different allocation strategy. Only 
-       [virtual] Expansion ROM at f8000000 [disabled] [size=128K]
+       Expansion ROM at c8000000 [disabled] [size=128K]
on my system worries me.

> +mtrr: type mismatch for e0000000,10000000 old: write-back new:
> write-combining +mtrr: type mismatch for e0000000,10000000 old: write-back
> new: write-combining
>
>
> Set up MTRRs the right way. Fix.

Indeed!

> Once the issues mentioned and linked above are fixed, we may be able to
> claim support for the M57SLI.

Good to hear I'm not alone :-)

> Oh, and io_dump.c is here:
> http://linuxbios.org/pipermail/linuxbios/2007-October/025630.html

Thanks!
I'll now reboot to get a diff, and test NoDDC2...

	Torsten




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