Branden wrote...
In the first place, I think my assumption of it exposing a large rom
was wrong, it looks like they only actually only expose a small amount
as regular bios boot rom space. While that sounds annoying, it would
probably still be workable though.
…
I'm hoping that somebody still remembers a bit about them and maybe
knows something about how I can get the chip working, confirm that
it's not working, or just tell me I'm doing it wrong.
It has been a long time since I have used one of these (and never with
coreboot) but from what I remember the device needed something like 16KB
in the expansion ROM area (between 640KB and 1MB).
The DiskOnChip contained firmware that was executed as a BIOS extension
/ option ROM. For DOS based systems the firmware hooked onto int 13h
(disk services) so that it got allocated a drive letter and also handled
the the flash paging / erasing / reading / writing. I used devices with
capacities ranging from 2MB to 256MB and they all only needed the same
amount of space in the ROM area.
My first question… what have you plugged the DiskOnChip into? Is it a
motherboard that was designed to accept them or is it a plug in card
with a ROM socket on it? (M-Systems initial evaluation board was an ISA
card).
As you tried to do, I would start with DOS as it is a more simple
environment to play in. I would also start with a BIOS that has legacy
ROM support in it. Check as it boots for messages relating to M-Systems
and DiskOnChip. If there aren’t any of those then use DOS debug to look
through the expansion ROM area and make sure you can see the firmware.
Once that is working, move on to coreboot, Linux or whatever other
combination you want to use with them.
-Andy.
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