UBoot Second Level Bootloader (UB2LB) update
I have been fiddling with my UBoot Second Level Bootloader (UB2LB) project. I ahve cleaned the code a little bit and added some nice features... Until now UB2LB assumed that user wants to perform network boot (through TFTP) only. Now it listens to the uboot and uses it's list of boot devices. It tries to boot of media selected through the environment variables boot1, boot2 and boot3. As soon as it supports booting from desired media and as soon as the media contains boot/menu.lst file (the file defining the layout of kernel modules and other boot options) it will start booting from it.
Currently the UB2LB supports booting through TFTP and CD (ISO9660 with optional RockRidge extensions). Since UBoot in Sam440 does support ElTorito, one can boot AROS (or at least parts of it, as Sam440 AROS is not yet ready ;)) directly from CD.
Besides ub2lb, I have been working on AROS for Sam440 too. There are already 30 modules loaded together with kernel into memory! Among them one may find dos.library and radeon driver. Both still need intensive testing though. At the very moment the filesystems and SATA driver are missing, therefore dos.library complains in it's usual way:
No bootable disk was found.
Please insert a bootable disk in any drive.
Retrying in 5 seconds...
Which is a lie of course, since it retries every 10 seconds :) The radeon driver is much more noisy and says
[ATI] Init
[ATI] Enumerator: checking productid 4c66 vendorid 1002 01004414
[ATI] Enumerator: found productid 4c66 vendorid 1002 masked_check 0
[ATI] Got framebuffer @ a8000000 (size=128MiB)
[ATI] Got registers @ b0000000 (size=64KiB)
[ATI] Got BIOS @ c0000 (size=128KiB)
[ATI] Restoring MEM_CNTL (00000000), setting to 2d002d01
[ATI] Radeon init
[ATI] flags: IsMobility
[ATI] R300CGWorkaroung = No
[ATI] Video memory = 64MiB (128 bit DDR SDRAM)
[ATI] Primary:
Monitor -- AUTO
Connector -- DVI-D
DAC Type -- TVDAC/ExtDAC
TMDS Type -- Internal
DDC Type -- DVI_DDC
[ATI] Secondary:
Monitor -- AUTO
Connector -- VGA
DAC Type -- Primary
TMDS Type -- External
DDC Type -- VGA_DDC
[ATI] Video BIOS not detected, using default clock settings!
[ATI] PLL parameters: rf=2700 rd=12 min=12500 max=35000; xclk=10300
[ATI] Usable size: 65536KB
[ATI] AllocBitmapArea(4096x16@4) = 0
[ATI] AllocBitmapArea(64x64@4) = 0x40000
[ATI] Enumerator found a card (ProductID=4c66)
[ATI] The card is supported
The AROS for Sam440 looks really promising. I am going to work on SATA driver right now and see how far will AROS boot.
No screenshot today... Again... Instead, if you are happy Sam440 owner, you may download test iso here. Do not expect much from it. If you assume that it will boot on any PPC hardware, then you are wrong. It will not work on any MacIntosh hardware. It will not work on any other OpenFirmware hardware. No, it will not work on Pegasos. Neither on Efika. This ISO does require UBoot firmware (with implementation of the boota command!) to work.
Ah, yes. Do not even try to boot this iso on AmigaOne, µA1 or any other. It will crash system before even exec.library will say "Hello, world!". AMCC440 CPU conforms the PowerPC E-Book specification and this version of AROS will not work any other type of PPC core :)
Anyway, have fun and stay tuned for more news :)
PS. Happy Easter to You all :))
Currently the UB2LB supports booting through TFTP and CD (ISO9660 with optional RockRidge extensions). Since UBoot in Sam440 does support ElTorito, one can boot AROS (or at least parts of it, as Sam440 AROS is not yet ready ;)) directly from CD.
Besides ub2lb, I have been working on AROS for Sam440 too. There are already 30 modules loaded together with kernel into memory! Among them one may find dos.library and radeon driver. Both still need intensive testing though. At the very moment the filesystems and SATA driver are missing, therefore dos.library complains in it's usual way:
No bootable disk was found.
Please insert a bootable disk in any drive.
Retrying in 5 seconds...
Which is a lie of course, since it retries every 10 seconds :) The radeon driver is much more noisy and says
[ATI] Init
[ATI] Enumerator: checking productid 4c66 vendorid 1002 01004414
[ATI] Enumerator: found productid 4c66 vendorid 1002 masked_check 0
[ATI] Got framebuffer @ a8000000 (size=128MiB)
[ATI] Got registers @ b0000000 (size=64KiB)
[ATI] Got BIOS @ c0000 (size=128KiB)
[ATI] Restoring MEM_CNTL (00000000), setting to 2d002d01
[ATI] Radeon init
[ATI] flags: IsMobility
[ATI] R300CGWorkaroung = No
[ATI] Video memory = 64MiB (128 bit DDR SDRAM)
[ATI] Primary:
Monitor -- AUTO
Connector -- DVI-D
DAC Type -- TVDAC/ExtDAC
TMDS Type -- Internal
DDC Type -- DVI_DDC
[ATI] Secondary:
Monitor -- AUTO
Connector -- VGA
DAC Type -- Primary
TMDS Type -- External
DDC Type -- VGA_DDC
[ATI] Video BIOS not detected, using default clock settings!
[ATI] PLL parameters: rf=2700 rd=12 min=12500 max=35000; xclk=10300
[ATI] Usable size: 65536KB
[ATI] AllocBitmapArea(4096x16@4) = 0
[ATI] AllocBitmapArea(64x64@4) = 0x40000
[ATI] Enumerator found a card (ProductID=4c66)
[ATI] The card is supported
The AROS for Sam440 looks really promising. I am going to work on SATA driver right now and see how far will AROS boot.
No screenshot today... Again... Instead, if you are happy Sam440 owner, you may download test iso here. Do not expect much from it. If you assume that it will boot on any PPC hardware, then you are wrong. It will not work on any MacIntosh hardware. It will not work on any other OpenFirmware hardware. No, it will not work on Pegasos. Neither on Efika. This ISO does require UBoot firmware (with implementation of the boota command!) to work.
Ah, yes. Do not even try to boot this iso on AmigaOne, µA1 or any other. It will crash system before even exec.library will say "Hello, world!". AMCC440 CPU conforms the PowerPC E-Book specification and this version of AROS will not work any other type of PPC core :)
Anyway, have fun and stay tuned for more news :)
PS. Happy Easter to You all :))
Labels: PPC
posted by Michal Schulz at 08:43
2 Comments:
Congrats! :-)
It's a pleasure to see how much you seem to enjoy those steps!
AROS would be very nice on an eeePC as well. What AROS really lack, is a fully supported cheap mass-produced computer. Imagine if it where possible to download an image file from the eeePC's linux, then use a raw write utility to write AROS to a SD-card (with GRUB configured). Just reboot, and there is AROS! The eeePC is a perfect fit for AROS, because it is cheap, small and fun. It also has a big community. AROS would really shine on the eeePC since it run entirely in RAM. Once the system is up and running, there is very little disk activity. A large AROS user base on a fixed hardware platform would be very nice to have for finding bugs too.
But I am not here to complain! You do excellent work, as always :-)
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