Nick Jarmany wrote:
>
> We are interested in creating a LinuxBIOS machine around our SiS630 based
> motherboard. The main reasons are:-
>
> 1) Boot time
> 2) No moving parts
> 3) Cost
>
Yea, that is why SiS is doing with LinuxBIOS.
> The application is for a Web/Java enabled browser with a flat screen.
>
Cool, could you give more details ?? Currently we are looking for more
"higher-level" application solutions.
> My questions are:-
>
> 1) We implement a 2Mbit or 4MBit flash device (SST29EE020 or 040) for the
> BIOS. Is this enough to boot the core Linux system or do we need to
> implement a DoC as well?
You can do it with 4Mbit (aka 512KB) flash to store the minimal kernel
with
LinuxBIOS itself.
> 2) What is the footprint size of LinuxBIOS without loading any fany drivers?
We have achived well under 32KB for a specially fine tuned
config/Makefile.
> 3) We would prefer then to load the graphics kernel, browser etc from a
> flash IDE device, as this has much greater bandwidth than DoC and does not
> require any special hardware considerations. Does the basic Linux kernel
> load an IDE driver? What is your experience of this method over DoC?
>
The most serious problem of integrating a minimal kernel "together" with
LinuxBIOS into a 512KB flash is that the kernel is, well, minimal. You
can
not have much feature with it. One feature is the TCP/IP stack which can
not be "modulized" and too big for 512KB image. I suggest you should do
it this way:
1. Use 256KB flash for storing LinuxBIOS only, which looks pretty
much a waste but you hardly can find any smaller flash any way.
2. Implement a minimal kernel loader with can load kernel form
IDE device. You can take a look at TIARA source code for this.
AFIAK Steven James form LinuxLabs have done something similiar.
> By the way, you may like to know that SiS has just achieved first silicon on
> the 550 device. This is basically a 630 but with CPU integrated on-chip!
> Availability towards end of this year.
>
Thanks a lot for your interested in our 550.
Ollie
