Config Linux BIOS: Is it possible (Re: [OLPC-devel] DOS in Windows Flash Disaster Recovery Utility?

[supat at supat.eu.org]

Hi Jordan Crouse,

Your message is wonderful helpful information to me :)
Thank you.

On Wed, 6 Sep 2006, Jordan Crouse wrote:

> On 06/09/06 09:46 -0600, Ronald G Minnich wrote:
>> supat at supat.eu.org wrote:
>>
>>> At this moment I bring back old BIOS already and every thing go back.
>>> (Marvell wireless can work under slackware)
>>
>> this is not as simple as it sounds. Insyde uses a full AMD-supplied VSA.
>> The VSA does a lot of tricky magic. My guess is that the combo of
>> slackware+VSA is the issue, not Insyde per se. We still need to see what
>> is going on.

Yes. It does a lot of tricky magic to let old s/w like slackware to work 
correctly.

My suspect at this moment is slackware compile with math emu and 496 
support. So , some command on .config from fedora may not work correctly.

I did not give up but will try to find out the exact sustainable solution.

> Slackware, like Fedora (and everything else) is just a combination of
> packages.  Of these packages, only the kernel happens to interact with the i
> hardware and BIOS in any serious way.  If you are not using the correct
> kernel for this platform and situation, then bad things can and will happen.

Yes. and I beleive I used the right kernel already.
I did used exact config-2.6.17-1.2608.olpc1 , kernel, .img
And it can boot up slackware under new linux BIOS but wireless did not 
show up. I guess because lib and bin of slackware cannot bring up some 
devices correctly.


> Slackware has no possible way of understanding the USB wireless or how to
> configure it.  Fedora Rawhide knows, but only because it is up to date, and
> we have a crack Fedora staff that will do our bidding (insert evil laugh here).


Yes. and old BIOS do some magic trick to let slackware to see USB wireless 
randomly :( because it was crashed easily and have to reprobe it again and 
again.

The disadvantage of old BIOS is slow to boot and unstable.

If I have time I will develop linux BIOS to have more helpful feature.

> Supat will need to make sure that he does the right things to see the
> wireless:
>
> 1) Make sure the antennae are attached
> 2) Use a recent kernel - with libertas included
> 3) Use the recommended LinuxBIOS version
> 4) Mount usbfs on /proc/bus/usb and ensure that the marvell device
> is listed in 'devices' (vendor=1286, product=2001).
> 5) Follow http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OS_images and make sure that the
> most recent firmware is installed in /lib/firmware/usb8388.bin

Thank you much FYI above.
I will try to trace it.

I think step #4 is messed up under slackware because some times
/proc/bus/usb show nothing (no usb wireless)


> If all of these happen together and in the right order, things should work.
> If any ofthe steps should fail, then please open a ticket to ensure
> that we track any problems.


Yes, the right order is also important.

> After all that, he is welcome to create slackware packages that will ensure
> others don't have to work so much to see wireless.  Its not always fun being
> the early adopter, but it is rewarding.

Yes, it reward me to know a lot already. Actually, I stop compiling kernel 
myself long time ago because people like you provide us a lot of an 
alternative kernel that we simply can ftp it and plug it in.

Working always give us a lot of good experiance benefit to our world.

Thank you,
supat

>
> Jordan
>
> -- 
> Jordan Crouse
> Senior Linux Engineer
> Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
> <www.amd.com/embeddedprocessors>
>
>