Hello
got 2 pcchips K7 730 boards yesterday, installed linuxbios and "BINGO"
booted perfectly first go.
Previously I was having enormous troubles booting the matsonic 630, it was
very erratic and caused plenty of stress, I had tracked it down to memory
not
being initialised but I was the only one with the problem. As more people
are starting to use linuxbios and have POST cards, similar symptoms are
cropping up.
docipl normally does not have POST code so you will be in the dark thru
docipl
boot, I have hacked the docipl to test memory initialisation via POST card,
I have attached the 512 byte binary with this email for those having
problems,
it goes like this:
1. size memory as normal
2. initialise memory controller as normal
3. start refresh cycle as normal
4. initialise stack pointer as normal
5. include this code:
pushw $0x9999
movb 0x00, %al
popw %ax
outb %al, 0x80
hlt
6. chopped out some code to fit into 512bytes
If POST comes up with 99 you have memory and 99.99% of the time
linuxbios should boot, the other .01% is a chipset problem, very rare.
If POST comes up with something else, it is reading an open bus and
memory is the problem. At least it narrows down the problem.
Because it halts the processor in docipl you only need to write the
512 byte image to DoC millenium, reboot with POST card in pci slot
and hopefully 99 should appear.
A footnote to this, I used the K7 board to test the code and when I
rebuilt the matsonic system, run the check, it came up with POST
of D7, swapped memory slots and 99 came up, replaced with
normal docipl and linuxbios booted, although I had checked everything,
including dimm slots when I first had the problem, anyway now I have
linuxbios up on 730 and 630 boards, I'm happy, although I will be keeping
a sharp eye on them.
Regards
Brian
docipl-testmemory.bin
