other features for Linuxbios

[Jeremy Jackson]

Here's some ideas i've been getting:

firmware debugger: perhaps using romcc, a minimal debugger would allow 
trying different ram initialization sequences rapidly.

If it were treated as a stub, it would be possible to run make on the 
controlling machine, and (with some line from the serial port to the 
reset line on the target board) have it compile the IPL ram init 
sequence, reset the board, upload it, then test it.  By keeping VI open 
in another window, you could try new code every few seconds.

Where would it store this code?  Well there's Eric's Cache-as-ram trick, 
where available, and I was thinking about all those video cards that 
aren't used with Linuxbios... don't almost all video cards have static 
ram on them?  What would it take to execute code from there?

I wonder how much the gdb kernel stub depends on the kernel?  A serial 
console api could be useful there and elsewhere, to avoid duplicating 
the serial code in the various payloads.

other ideas... it would be swell to have an IPL that could accept 
downloads (zmodem?) via the serial console port, and (re)flash the 
payload, though it would require reimplementing the flashing code. 
Probably nicer to use the MTD drivers in Linux.

Regards,

Jeremy

-- 
Jeremy Jackson
Coplanar Networks
(519)897-1516
http://www.coplanar.net