LinuxBIOS is no more. coreboot is the next thing. · 15 January 2008 by Alex Beregszaszi
Ironically, in my LinuxBIOS speech I mentioned my thoughts about the name itself: outdated.
Now the group had chosen to change the name, to reflect the projects plans better. LinuxBIOS v3 does not contains any Linux code, nor its purpose is to boot a Linux kernel, it is just a core to boot specific payloads, hence the name coreboot.
The new webpage is at coreboot.org, and the Subversion repositories are renamed aswell.
Award Bootblock BIOS · 28 December 2007 by Alex Beregszaszi
Today I tried reviving an old system for LinuxBIOS hacking: a Chaintech Apogee 7NJL1 board, which was never used, still in the original packaging.
After the first boot an unusual screen appeared which told me the following: ROM checksum failure. It was the Award Bootblock BIOS, a recovery system, which reads the AWDFLASH utility and a BIOS image from a floppy. It took a bit to find an appropriate bios image, as the manufacturer quit the motherboard business and no longer operates a support website. Shame.
So I had a floppy prepared (found an old 3com install disk and finally found a use for my USB floppy drive :) and the AWDFLASH ulility started up, until the next screen: The program file’s BIOS-Lock String does not match with your system!
Funny, the image in the flash is corrupt and the recovery utility stops because the mainboard identification string – which resides in the corrupted region – does not match.
My final fix was to hack the AWDFLASH utility and disable the check. In version 8.22A (file size is 39180 bytes, md5: 003f66c91f25744168a9814ddf04b22c) at byte offset 0×7dba change 0xf9 to 0xf8.
(Technically, 0xf9 is set carry flag, while 0xf8 is clear carry flag. This flag is used in the code later to determine error conditions. We report no error in any case, but the message itself will be displayed.)
HPCSW: LinuxBIOS · 27 November 2007 by Alex Beregszaszi
High Performance Computer Science Week spans between 31st March and 5th April next year. The last two days will include a LinuxBIOS summit,
LinuxBIOS presentation follow up · 22 November 2007 by Alex Beregszaszi
The origanizers just made the recorded video and the slides of the presentation is available. Both is in Hungarian though.
LinuxBIOS @ Budapest NewTech Meetup · 2 November 2007 by Alex Beregszaszi
The Budapest New Technology Meetup (look at the group number) is a monthly event, each time with about five 5 minute presentations.
Really interesting themes are presented. In August we had a long introduction to Gomboc.
Now at the next event on wednesday, the 7th november I will talk about LinuxBIOS and BIOSes alltogether. As much as one can fit into a 5 minutes talk plus a 5 minutes QA session.