Coreboot and SeaBIOS

Post by **pete** » Wed Sep 05, 2012 3:19 pm

A few months back purchased a "few" Apen Digital engines. That said they all came with little or big XPE builds for some defunct advertising company. They were being used for some multiscreen display "thing". Not sure if it would be OK to post one of these builds to play with or even if they would help? They are all under 1-2 Gb on CF cards. Personally they were a bit slow except for the graphics pieces and not sure how much you could do with an after completion but edible (mean editable; but edible sounds nicer).

I also purchased some "test" 17" 3M MTS "test" capacitance open frame LCDs around the same time that I am really impressed with (versus the resistive screens I am using today)...great candidates for the mounting of the Joggler mother board to the backs of these open frame monitors (due to WAF only have one installed right now). These were brand new and have project/test batch numbers on them and use both serial and USB touch interfaces (got both on the 17" LCDs).

Mevi · Post by **Mevi** » Wed Sep 05, 2012 3:29 pm

I googled gPXE which is a bootloader that enables PCs without a PXE BIOS/NIC to boot over LAN. Suppports Linux booting.

mickchip · Post by **mickchip** » Wed Sep 05, 2012 3:31 pm

pete_c wrote:Very nice mickchip.

I might go ahead and try to solder a 50 pin connector myself. I have a soldering station. What size tip did you utilize to solder on to your PATA connection.

I used an Antec 25 watt iron with a tapered to a point tip, still get bridges across contacts but just use copper solder braid
to remove them

Post by **pete** » Wed Sep 05, 2012 3:42 pm

Thank you mickchip

I have one of these that has become somewhat of a floater around the house as my workbench is still in "storage" kind of in the basement off to the side with a bunch of boxes on it still. That said I can purchase 1mm, 1.6mm and 2 mm ends for it (I think). I also do have a hold the device as I solder with magnifying glass that has become somewhat of a floater around the house. (wife is always wondering about me?).

mickchip · Post by **mickchip** » Wed Sep 05, 2012 3:53 pm

If you do decide to try it yourself, clamp or tape the connector exactly in place and solder the mounting pads either end then you can remove the clamp/tape
and take your time with the 40 connections ( I would certainly have some copper braid handy )

Post by **pete** » Wed Sep 05, 2012 4:28 pm

thank you mickchip; will do.

mickchip · Post by **mickchip** » Wed Sep 05, 2012 5:08 pm

inaxeon wrote:I could use another PATA joggler too, I ordered another 10 connectors more than a month ago, no sign of them yet.

Also going to buy a 32GB for Win7 experimentation. 16B too darn small!

Going to use the 16GB for this project: http://www.jogglerwiki.com/wiki/Using_l ... he_Joggler which will run XP for now, as it seems to be awesomely stable on 0.6.

After seeing that board that you built reminded me of one I once built for my grand kids,
it was an infrared lap counter and timer for 4 mini rc cars (as you can see not quite up to your standard )

inaxeon · Post by **inaxeon** » Wed Sep 05, 2012 7:45 pm

mickchip wrote:I used an Antec 25 watt iron with a tapered to a point tip, still get bridges across contacts but just use copper solder braid to remove them

Weller WTCP (I prefer the US/Australian version) is the iron for real engineers

A good way to reduce bridging is to use liquid flux. I used to use Electrolube aerosol flux but I've found that those Maplin "No Clean" flux pens do the same job and make a lot less mess.

mickchip wrote:After seeing that board that you built reminded me of one I once built for my grand kids,
it was an infrared lap counter and timer for 4 mini rc cars (as you can see not quite up to your standard )

Maybe I should keep quiet about some of the larger and more complex boards I've built recently. That's pretty cool though, looks oldschool. I've made an awful lot of boards with my home chemical baths too but find that for the more complex stuff, it's better to design it, and pay someone else to make it

danfoshizzle · Post by **danfoshizzle** » Wed Sep 05, 2012 9:09 pm

Haha, most soldering I ever done was when I put an lm386 amp chip and sound activated led's in my psp, sort of out of my depth making my own boards though lol

Post by **hawsey** » Wed Sep 05, 2012 9:55 pm

Soldering wires on an MDF at work lol two wires, big blob of solder

tales of flooding chips with solder and mopping up afterwards intrigue and scare me .
I have the hands of a drinker not a brain surgeon

acesabe · Post by **acesabe** » Thu Sep 06, 2012 9:21 am

Mevi wrote:I googled gPXE which is a bootloader that enables PCs without a PXE BIOS/NIC to boot over LAN. Suppports Linux booting.

Ah yes, without bootrom on the NIC then gPXE would be the way to go, we used to use a suite of old laptops with PCMCIA NIC cards with custom install of gPXE (or whatever it used to be called back then) to boot off the LTSP server...those were the days! Should be easy enough to get working, but we digress from topic now....

Post by **pete** » Thu Sep 06, 2012 10:32 pm

Thank you inaxeon for the suggestions on the flux pen to utilize for said endeavor.

I did find some spare ZIF to USB boards along with mini USB hubs with Zif connectors that I purchased for the Asus Netbook mods sitting around.

With these I can "test" the oven baking portion of the endeavor.

Not sure of the brand of soldering station that I have; just that I paid close to $200 USD for it and it works nicely even in its portable wherever in the house mode that I utilize it. It'll be a kitchen table endeavor; but I should set up my workbench as I have one of those large circular lamps with a magnifying glass on it that I probably used a few times a while back.

Mevi · Post by **Mevi** » Fri Sep 07, 2012 1:23 pm

The Windows 8 audio HW seems to be detected and a generic audio device driver installed. Speakers work (with some digital fizz) but the headphone socket doesn't output anything for me. The old XP audio driver that we have used before - the one that enables both the speakers AND headphones at the same time - it can be installed on W8 in XP compatibility mode. Interesting that this works.... not because it solves anything as it doesn't, but it does open up the number of options for alternative drivers and support documentation.

inaxeon · Post by **inaxeon** » Fri Sep 07, 2012 9:30 pm

Mevi wrote:The Windows 8 audio HW seems to be detected and a generic audio device driver installed. Speakers work (with some digital fizz) but the headphone socket doesn't output anything for me. The old XP audio driver that we have used before - the one that enables both the speakers AND headphones at the same time - it can be installed on W8 in XP compatibility mode. Interesting that this works.... not because it solves anything as it doesn't, but it does open up the number of options for alternative drivers and support documentation.

Have you guys ever taken some time to read about these chips and how the drivers are configured? I don't think you need to go messing around with the source code to tweak this stuff... My recollection is that these drivers were designed in such a way that not-particularly-technical people working for hardware vendors could customise them for their hardware designs just by editing a few scripts or configuration files...

I remember a few years ago - making a Windows XP audio driver for a system with a Sigmatel codec which only had Windows 7 support. I just went around the board with a multimeter with the chip datasheet on hand and edited a script in the reference driver based on my findings - it was super basic stuff. Sorry I haven't got the time to look at this myself!

mickchip · Post by **mickchip** » Fri Sep 07, 2012 9:34 pm

I have tried about 6 different Android install disks and every one of them turns off the usb just as it's going to detecting Android
and the screen goes fuzzy and it hangs.
Thing is I'm pretty sure I got an android live cd to boot and run once, but not anymore.

inaxeon · Post by **inaxeon** » Fri Sep 07, 2012 9:44 pm

mickchip wrote:I have tried about 6 different Android install disks and every one of them turns off the usb just as it's going to detecting Android
and the screen goes fuzzy and it hangs.
Thing is I'm pretty sure I got an android live cd to boot and run once, but not anymore.

Sorry Mick! until I get to the bottom of this ACPI stuff, we're a bit stuck on these kinds of problems. Hopefully I'll be able to spend some more time on it this weekend.

mickchip · Post by **mickchip** » Fri Sep 07, 2012 10:08 pm

Sorry if it sounds like I'm complaining, I'm not just observing what works and what doesn't.
I think it's fantastic what you've achieved in such a short time.

Mevi · Post by **Mevi** » Sat Sep 08, 2012 5:36 pm

inaxeon wrote:Have you guys ever taken some time to read about these chips and how the drivers are configured? I don't think you need to go messing around with the source code to tweak this stuff... My recollection is that these drivers were designed in such a way that not-particularly-technical people working for hardware vendors could customise them for their hardware designs just by editing a few scripts or configuration files...

I remember a few years ago - making a Windows XP audio driver for a system with a Sigmatel codec which only had Windows 7 support. I just went around the board with a multimeter with the chip datasheet on hand and edited a script in the reference driver based on my findings - it was super basic stuff. Sorry I haven't got the time to look at this myself!

I did have a look through the spec sheet to see what's what. I think I just need to spend a bit more time with it. Thanks Inaxeon.

mickchip · Post by **mickchip** » Tue Sep 11, 2012 4:12 pm

Been trying to get this to install with a GUI for ages, could install but only ended up in a terminal.
Well i've done it, nothing works as yet (touch, wifi,ethernet etc) but now I can work on that.

By the way, I can only get it to work off the pata port, won't boot off USB.

claybratt · Post by **claybratt** » Tue Sep 11, 2012 8:48 pm

Sorry to ask a stupid question, but is there a walk-through or anything on getting win7 or 8 up yet? I have a few joggers and would like to give it a try. Again my apologies

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Coreboot and SeaBIOS

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