Hi Chris, Things are not that simple as:
Chris Wilson wrote: > Hi all, > > I have a feeling that the serial console, the only way to configure a Soekris, > is very 1970s. Admittedly it is quite reliable, but slow, fiddly, most modern > computers don't even have a serial port any more, and I've found USB-to-serial > converters quite unreliable, with dropped characters causing issues using the > terminal and boot menu. Also, comBIOS appears to have a bug which causes the > output of many boot loaders (including PXELINUX and GRUB) to be corrupted and > unreadable. Many boot loaders try to output to both BIOS and serial port at the same time, creating problem when the BIOS redirect to the serial port.... But if there is a bug and somebody can give me details then I can look into updating the comBIOS.. > I've found it useful to connect a Wiznet serial-to-LAN gateway to in-school > servers, to allow remote access to the serial console even if the machine is > misbehaving. However this is pretty ugly to look at, and fragile. It would be > great if something like this was embedded on the motherboard. See below.... > Even just UDP support in comBIOS would be useful, to allow remote initiated > PXE > boot or alternate boot of machines that had a corrupt filesystems. If the BIOS > was open source then we could do this ourselves. > > (Incidentally is there a reason that a custom BIOS was written instead of > using > LinuxBIOS/coreboot? has anyone done any work on getting coreboot to work on a > Soekris? No Soekris boards are listed on the coreboot compatibility table.) The comBIOS was written 12 years ago, before Linux/coreboot even existed.... And as I have said before, the problem with LinuxBIOS/coreboot is that they usually don't have support for new hardware. And if I have to add support for my hardware I'll rather do it on my small and simple comBIOS that I know than on the large and complex LinixBIOS/coreboot codebase that I have no clue how work.... It's not really an option to have other people do it, too many issues with that when it's new hardware and the BIOS have to be done while bringing up the hardware.... > There is also a USB Client device in the net6501, although not exposed. With a > little bit of work (I hope) on the next version, this could be exposed and > connected to the xilinx, which could act as a virtual serial or LAN adaptor on > the USB side, be able to reset the processor and talk to the comBIOS. > Similarly > the xilinx could be wired to an ethernet MAC and handle serial-over-LAN, > appearing to the OS as a virtual serial port. See below.... > Finally, there are other PCI devices that might be useful, but are not > exposed, > such as the SDIO and TPM interfaces. I don't want to use functionality there's only present in the E6xx/EG20T chipset, especially if it don't really have any use in the intended use of our boards. Otherwise it will complicate my life when making the next boards.... > Soren, do these sound like useful ideas for the next board? There are plans for improving oth in band and out of band management. The small ARM uC used on the net6501 is actually connected to the first ethernet controllers SMbus with ethernet pass though (see Intel 82574L datasheet), there's just a lot of code to do so it's not on the specification list yet. I had a programmer working on it, but he jumped ship.... I'm now considering how to get it done . In the same uC family there are also versions with USB ports, and those will probably be used on new boards going forward, enabling management over USB. But I'm not sure about dropping the serial management port.... Best Regards, Soren Kristensen CEO & Chief Engineer Soekris Engineering, Inc. _______________________________________________ Soekris-tech mailing list Soekris-tech@lists.soekris.com http://lists.soekris.com/mailman/listinfo/soekris-tech
