some questions about nForce and LinuxBIOS

David Hendricks cro_marmot at comcast.net
Wed Nov 3 03:29:00 CET 2004


I don't think anyone's done an nForce2 port for LinuxBIOS. The nForce4
on the other hand might be different, you would have to ask Dr. Lu @
Tyan about that.

And Ron might have just made bootup time <= 8 seconds for K8s. I'm dying
to try this stuff out on my nForce3 :)

On Wed, 3 Nov 2004 00:52:55 -0800 (PST)
Kory Herzinger <koryherzinger at yahoo.com> wrote:

> 
> I am working on my senior project in college, and have run into a
> slight issue with how long it takes for my BIOS to POST. I would like
> LinuxBIOS to boot my system into a minimal Linux kernel in as little
> amount of time as necessary, and then have that kernel boot into a
> Linux system I've already built and configured on the hard drive. From
> doing some research on your project I've found that this goes by the
> catchy name of LOBOS :-) From the kernel that the LinuxBIOS will boot,
> I don't need network, sound, or video support. I'd like to leave it up
> to the existing Linux installation on my hard drive to bring up these
> devices for me. Here's the specs on the board I am using:
> 
> Northbridge: NForce2 Crush 18G IGP chipset
> Southbridge: MCP chipset / High-speed interface to the MCP
> OnBoard GFX: NVidia GeForce4 MX
> 
> The board has support for TV composite signal-out which I will be
> using once the system is up and running, but since nVidia doesn't
> release specs or source for their hardware, I obviously can't use it
> during the BIOS phase. So I guess the real questions are:
> 
> 1) Is it possible to build a LinuxBIOS that will run on my system?
> 2) If so, since the support for network, sound, and audio devices will
> not be present in the BIOS, can I still bring them up in my Linux
> kernel using the proprietary drivers distributed by nVidia? 3) If the
> above two scenarios are possible, could I throw my linux system
> currently on the hard drive into a NVRAM device and boot it from there
> to further reduce boot time?
> 
> I appreciate your help with this. If you are interested in my senior
> project, there is information on my project website:
> www.novagameconsole.com
> 
> Anything you can offer is greatly appreciated! Thanks!
> 
> 			
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