Newbie with epia M-II

[Larry Matter]

> On Monday 12 April 2004 12:57 pm, Ignacio Verona wrote:
>
>> hi! This is my first post. I'm trying to develop my own Car PC and using
>> LinuxBios I hope to get faster boot times. I'm using a Via EPIA M-II
>> 10000. What are the first steps I should take?
>
> Search the archives to see if anyone else has built LinuxBIOS for that
> board;
> if not, check your chipset with lspci and see if someone has got that
> chipset
> working on a different board.

I also have an EPIA MII, though it is the fanless 6000.  I have
successfully installed LinuxBIOS and it is loading etherboot (verified by
looking at the serial output and my dhcp server log).  I'm currently stuck
getting an etherboot image that works, but I'm sure I'll get past that
soon.

I basically followed the epia howto but used via/epia-m as the mainboard
in my config file.  I also used the exact version of etherboot as the
howto even though there are much newer versions.

>> The epia bios is socketed on 32-lead PLCC format. What is the biggest
>> rom
>> size I could get? It is possible to use DOC on this motherboard (may be,
>> I
>> could fit a usable linux system on... less than 64mb).
>
> 64Mbytes for a usable Linux system is not a challenge.
>
> Rather than thinking of DoC, you'd be better of using Compact Flash.   If
> your
> motherboard doesn't have a CF socket directly, you can use a simple (and
> cheap) CF-IDE adapter and put the CF where the HDD normally connects.

The MII does come with an onboard CF slot (and pcmcia slot) but I believe
it is connected via cardbus; it does not present itself as an ide device -
standard bios cannot boot from it.  You might be able to get that adapter
working using yenta socket driver, etc., but it is probably a lot easier
to get an CF-IDE adapter working first.  You probably want to use FILO
instead of etherboot too, but I'm not sure about that.  I'm still very
much a LinuxBIOS newbie too.

Good Luck!  And make sure you get a Bios Savior!

Larry