[LinuxBIOS] Gigabyte M575SLI

Peter Stuge stuge-linuxbios at cdy.org
Fri Apr 27 20:29:18 CEST 2007


On Fri, Apr 27, 2007 at 01:03:40AM -0500, Kevin Adler wrote:
> how easy is it to build the LinuxBIOS and flash it 

I would say that that the build process is fairly easy;

First, prepare a payload. I would pick etherboot in order to easily
experiment with different payloads, then adjust the payload line in
targets/gigabyte/m57sli/Config.lb to point to the payload file. Then:

cd targets
./buildtarget gigabyte/m57sli
cd gigabyte/m57sli/m57sli
make

And now you should have a linuxbios.rom.

Flash it with flashrom -w linuxbios.rom


> without bricking it?

:)

> (I've been looking at the sideproject here about using the extra
> bios socket, but my soldering skills are not very good and I don't
> have much in the way of decent soldering tools)

If I couldn't solder I wouldn't experiment myself simply because it
would be so much work to find someone who could fix it.

Perhaps you know someone who you could get some soldering help from?

One way to find a shop is to look for game console modification
shops, they do this sort of thing (and more advanced things) all day
and should be able to help you for around $50 if you bring the needed
components. (PLCC socket, resistor, wire and switch) Possibly a
friendly TV or radio repair shop could help too, but they may not
have suitable soldering equipment for the surface mount parts.


> and also, how easy is it to set what would be normal BIOS settings
> like voltage, cpu multipliers, etc... (For say overclocking a
> system)

None of these things were originally intended to be user settings,
so currently you have to hack the source code.

LinuxBIOS is designed to configure the system for optimal performance
while remaining within safe operation specifications for a particular
board and configuration. LB determines max memory speed by reading
the SPD identification EEPROM on RAM modules for example.

The desire to experiment with system performance and overclocking
should not be overlooked however.. I think it's an important and
exciting new use case.


> I've heard about a Google SoC project to get some sort of CMOS
> setup like interface after it is booted

Yes. This project will primarily be for the new generation LinuxBIOS,
v3, which is still in it's early stages of development, although it
is hoped to soon run on real hardware. :)

This also means that the board is pretty much clean, and we would
love to hear your ideas.

A great way to contribute to the project even if you don't write code
is to say what you want. It's not always obvious to developers since
we may be stuck in some certain way of thinking. (I know I would
never want to overclock. :)

My personal wet dream in this case is for _everything_ to be user
overridable, but I may be going a bit overboard..


//Peter




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