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sbc-mediagx

DISCUSSION David Given 2 participants 2 messages Sep 14, 2000 1 message not in the archive Memory technology devices (MTD)

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#1 lore raw
Quoted 7 lines

Yep. It will do. The CFI probe stuff thinks that each chip is 2 interleaved => it thinks the size of the chip returned is half the actual size. It then looks for the second chip at two times the size returned ie 8*2=16Mibyte => it can't find the second chip. I fudged around this by ignoring the interleave when working out the address to probe for a second chip. This isn't in the CVS since it would break other peoples chips. I've reasly got to think of a better solution...

I don't know enough about the way flash works to determine what's going on, I'm afraid.

[...]

Quoted 5 lines

They're not really partition but MTD devices that are restricted to certain areas of the flash.

The odd numbered devices are read only versions of the even numbered devices which is why mtd0 looks the same as mtd1.

Am I right in assuming that the partition sizes in sbc_mediagx.c are hard-coded and don't necessarily correspond to any particular region on the disk? FXINFO claims that the VBF partition starts at 256kB. Looking at dev/mtd/0, there's a ROM image in the bottom 8kB, and at 256kB there's something that looks suspiciously like a VBF header. I can certainly identify things like the volume serial number and various pieces of information that FXINFO gave me. These are then repeated every megabyte.

...

Yup, changing the partition information to:

const static PartitionInfo partition_info[]={
    {"SBC-MediaGX flash BIOS extension", 0, 256*1024},
    {"SBC-MediaGX flash VBF volume", 256*1024, 0},
};

...makes things make a whole lot more sense.

[...]

Quoted 2 lines

You won't beable to have both Linux and Dos booting of the flash. Just make sure you have a floppy drive to boot from...

I have one, yes. However I'm extremely wary of playing with the flash; as far as I can determine, the FlashFX BIOS extension and, possibly, the Award BIOS itself are in the flash. If I erased it all from within Linux, I might nuke those as well and render the board unbootable. If anyone can comfirm that this is not the case, I would be most grateful.

Am I right in assuming that VBF is patented and closed? Is any information on it at all available, even just enough to identify the start of the VBF partition?

Quoted 2 lines

Arcom is currently in the process of producing a Linux dev. kit which will do all this + booting for you.

Excellent.

David Given
[email protected]

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#2 lore raw
Quoted 4 lines · David Given
Quoted 2 lines

Arcom is currently in the process of producing a Linux dev. kit which will do all this + booting for you.

Excellent.

Irony: Rachel (my SO) and I wrote the Arcom website... now I work for the competition.

...who, incidentally, have a K6-2e+ board that's ncredibly small and featuresome... and which comes with Linux preloaded...

...sorry, must stop spamming now.

kira.

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