[LinuxBIOS] VIA EPIA MII 10k stability questions

[Peter Stuge]

Hej Lars!

On Thu, Dec 20, 2007 at 02:52:31PM +0100, Lars Randers wrote:
> I've been dabbling with this board and the writeups for about a
> week to little avail, so I'd like to hear from anyone who have this
> board running stable with LB, and preferably with VGA enabled.

I have a 6k which was fairly stable with VGA until the capacitors
blew, but I did not use all features on the board.


> I can't seem to build the bios successfully with the
> Config.vga.filo.lb configs.

Hm, I also seem to recall that the sample config didn't work. But I
think it was fairly easy to sort out. What errors do you encounter?


> I have also been investigating spurrious interrupts with the CF
> slot when running Linux (Centos 4.5 - 2.6.9 kernel)

This is a hardware problem with the Ricoh chip.


> and the strange LAN lockup, which seems to be related to a DMA
> issue in the southbridge chip.

AFAIK this is also a hardware problem.


> Should I just trash the board and look for a more stable platform?

If you have options, that may not be a bad idea.


> It's a nice platform, low power and all, but if it's hopelessly 
> flawed in design it's out. Any input on the issue welcome!

What other boards are your candidates?


> Furthermore I'm struggeling to get the Linux kernel to boot through
> the initrd without ending up in a panic. I know it's not a LB
> issue, but as I said, I'd like to get in contact with anyone who has
> any knowledge into the problem.

I don't like initrds much. As it stands you will need one solely for
the purpose of resetting the Ricoh chip, but I would prefer to hack
those few lines of code into FILO instead, so that the initrd can be
skipped.


> The wiki is incomplete in this respect and I certainly wouldn't
> mind donating some of my time in return updating it if I could
> get it working.

Well, you should be able to find other pages about how to make an
initrd. It will also very greatly with distributions, which makes
generic advice somewhat difficult to produce.

Why do you want the initrd in the first place? :) Is it some other
reason than resetcf?


//Peter