Messages in this thread |  | | Date | Thu, 9 May 1996 19:53:20 -0700 (PDT) | From | <> | Subject | [104] Linux kernels will not uncompress on a PC/104 386 board. why?? |
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I'm having difficulty getting an Intel 386SL-25Mhz based platform to boot a linux kernel and was wondering if some booting guru around here would be able to help me solve the problem. Since I too believe linux should take over and rule the world I think it would be good if I could get it running on this platform too...
The hardware is actually a PC/104 computer which consists of a single circuit board containing all the functions of a PC. From DOS's point of view this board seems to be 100% IBM compatible.
The actual hardware is a Megatel Brand PC/II+ model PC/104 embedded computer consisting of the following major chips: CPU: Intel i386SL KU80386SLB1C-25 Floppy controller: SMC FDC37C65CLJ P SCSI: unknown manufacturer (NEC?) DP5380V S9418AD Video VGA: CHIPS F65530 A Ethernet: Intel FA82595 Serial/parallel I/O: Intel KU82360SL
there are some other chips but I am unable to identify their function or they don't seem really relevant at this time.
When this board is hooked up to an XT keyboard, a monitor, a floppy drive, a scsi hard disk and a suitable power supply it functions just like a PC and I get the following bios messages at the beginning of a boot sequence (before any boot sectors are picked up/loaded/executed or what ever happens with boot sectors)...
+------------------------------------+ | (c) Copyright 1984-1993 | | Megatel Computer Corp. | +------------------------------------+ | Equipment: | | | | System Devices ok | | Video Cards 1 | | RAM Memory 3328+640 Kb | | Serial Ports 2 | | Printer Ports 1 | | Diskette Adapter ok | | Diskette Drives 1 | | Auxiliary Ports 1 | | Option ROMS 3 | +------------------------------------+ TrueFFS-BIOS -- Version 3.11B5 Copyright (c) M-Systems 1992, 1993 TSROM: SCSI BIOS, Version 2.14 Megatel Socket Services 3.1B51 PC/II+ Flash Disk @D000h, 2048 KBytes. SCSI ID: 0 Device: MAXTOR 7290-SCSI Drive C:
So those are the diagnostics I get before booting anything. I can boot DOS fine from either the floppy disk, the scsi disk (once it's been loaded there) and also from the 2Meg FLASH disk without problems. So DOS seems to treat this machine exactly as any other IBM/PC without any difficulties or complaints. (I mean difficulties other than being stuck with DOS ;-)
I understand that the flash disk only looks and acts like drive D: to DOS because BIOS routines are loaded and that these aren't going to work for linux because it ignores BIOS or something like that. I'm not worried about the flash disk booting yet until I can get it to boot linux from the hard disk. I'll work on device drivers for the flash disk later...
anyways. you gurus will probably be able to nail down my problem pretty quick since it is 100% repeatable and happens at the very start of the boot process...
For the following information I have used kernel versions 1.2.13(a.out), 1.3.57(ELF), 1.3.95(ELF), 1.3.97(ELF) all have been configured with: minimal set of drivers: Kernel Floating Point emulation IS enabled Memory IS limited to the low 16M (this board only has 4M or so) Floppy driver no IDE drivers no SCSI drivers (when I can get something to boot I'll add this so I can access my disk drive. no ethernet drivers no networking nothing else.
I created all the kernels using make mrproper make config make dep make clean make zImage dd if=/usr/src/linux/arch/i386/boot/zImage of=/dev/fd0
all of the kernels I have tried can SUCCESSFULLY boot my NORMAL desktop machine and when I boot my desktop with the floppy disk I get the following diagnostics...
Loading................................ Uncompressing Linux...done. Now booting the kernel Console: 16 point font, 400 scans Console: colour VGA+ 80x25, 1 virtual console (max 63)
and it continues on in a normal fashion panicking when attempting to mount root (which is no surprise since I have no hard disk drivers enabled).
HOWEVER when I try to use this same disk to boot the Megatel 386SL board that I want to use I only get the following...
Loading................................
(I do get a carriage return after that line so that the cursor winds up just below the 'L' in Loading and it just sits there) I do not get the "Uncompressing kernel..." portion at all that one would normally get on that line and the computer is just hung.
I tried looking through the bootsect code and files but I'm not very good with this low level assembly and I'm not familiar enough with boot procedures and caveats to make heads or tails out of what is going on or wrong.
Does anybody have any suggestions as to what may be preventing this board from booting (If I can get past the uncompression stage maybe everything else will work? or Any ideas on what I can do to solve the problem? or What can I do to help troubleshoot the problem further? let me know, I'll try anything at this point 'cause I'm sh*t out o' ideas.
Thanks for all your help and I apologize for the length of this message but I wanted to be as specific as possible and include as much relevant information as I could.
- Jeff Wiegley
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