[coreboot] CarPC project, with MB899 MB

Nasa nasa01 at comcast.net
Thu Oct 14 14:21:16 CEST 2010


----- "Peter Stuge" <peter at stuge.se> wrote:

> Nasa wrote:
> > > Did you pick a particular CPU for the board, or did the CPU come
> > > already installed when you bought the board?
> ..
> > I choose the CPU (a number of years ago) which is an Intel Core 2
> > Duo Mobile 1.66GHz.
> 
> Ok. I don't know if this CPU has been tested with coreboot, but even
> so it is possible that it will just work<tm>. You should give it a
> go.
> 
> 
> > I have read a little about payloads and noted that SeaBIOS would be
> > the easiest way to go... However (this being important for the
> > flash chip), I didn't see anything about the benefits of putting a
> > linux kernel as a payload.
> 
> Benefits are that fewer steps are required to boot the system, so
> with the kernel in boot flash you can immediately access the root
> filesystem regardless of where it is stored.
> 
> 
> > I did read from the FAQ that most chips aren't large enough to have
> > the kernel added as a payload.
> 
> The FAQ needs some updates. I guess "most" chips still aren't large
> enough for a kernel, but those 16Mbit chips should be able to hold a
> monolithic kernel optimized for a single board.
> 
> 
> > If my goal is the fastest boot time possible, while still
> > supporting the basic system, would going to a Linux payload be the
> > way to go?
> 
> 
> Maybe, but maybe not. If you are using flash media which does not
> have a spin-up delay then it might actually be faster for another
> payload to load the kernel off the drive using DMA.

I am indeed using an SSD drive to boot my system.  I also noted that
my motherboard isn't supported for full linux kernel install anyways.

> 
> 
> > If so, what size flash chip should I get?
> 
> The larger the better IMO. There can be a chipset limit for the flash
> chip size, but I don't know what it is for i945 chipsets. In any
> case a larger flash chip will still be usable, just at e.g. half
> capacity.
> 
> 
> > BTW: once I get this working, it's going up on the carpc forum -- I
> > know a lot of people would be interested in reducing their systems
> > boot time.
> 
> Yes. It's also the first thing I used coreboot for myself. Please
> mention that it is very important for people to check if their
> mainboard and/or CPU+chipset is already supported, otherwise they are
> looking at rather large projects of studying PC architecture and
> developing lots of low-level code to implement that support. An
> unsupported mainboard with a supported CPU+chipset is much less
> effort though, and could best case be just a few days-few weeks
> project for a C programmer.
> 
> For new installs of course hardware known to be coreboot confirmed
> would be best. :)

Will Do.

Nasa




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