Re: Atlas Board!

Re: Atlas Board!

[Kevin D. Kissell]

> I want to ask few questions about an Atlas board. Who has such a board
> maybe will give me some tips to have an working Linux on that machine.

I'm one of the guys who did the 2.2 port, so I hope I can help.

> 1. What type of RAM do I need ?

A PC100 SDRAM SIM - at least, that's what mine has.

> 2. I want to cross - compile the CVS linux kernel for Mips but I failed
> on a i686. Could anyone tell me if I try to compile the kernel on Atlas
> board I will  succeed.

I do all my builds native, either on an Indy or an Algorithmics
board (I've done it on the Atlas to prove it worked, but the other
two are faster).  What you might consider doing would be to
download a 2.2 kernel binary and the NFS installation kit
from the MIPS FTP site, bootstrap install the OS, then 
install the sources and native tools.  

See ftp://ftp.mips.com/pub/linux/mips/.  I've got a web
site at http://www.paralogos.com/mipslinux/ with pointers
to the relevant FTP directories at MIPS, and an HTML
version of the setup and installation procedure.

One word of warning.  The Atlas design uses a Philips
"super I/O" chip that has some bugs.  Specifically, the
ethernet interface is wonky under load.  It works well
enough for the boot PROM monitor (YAMON) to be
able to boot the Linux kernel from your TFTP server
completely reliably, but under serious FTP or NFS
traffic, it tends to lose interrupts/packets.  I *strongly*
recommend putting an AMD PCnet PCI card in the
Atlas' PCI slot.   The driver should already be built
into the kernel binaries on the MIPS FTP site.

            Regards,

            Kevin K.

Re: Atlas Board!

[Kevin D. Kissell]

> I want to ask few questions about an Atlas board. Who has such a board
> maybe will give me some tips to have an working Linux on that machine.

I'm one of the guys who did the 2.2 port, so I hope I can help.

> 1. What type of RAM do I need ?

A PC100 SDRAM SIM - at least, that's what mine has.

> 2. I want to cross - compile the CVS linux kernel for Mips but I failed
> on a i686. Could anyone tell me if I try to compile the kernel on Atlas
> board I will  succeed.

I do all my builds native, either on an Indy or an Algorithmics
board (I've done it on the Atlas to prove it worked, but the other
two are faster).  What you might consider doing would be to
download a 2.2 kernel binary and the NFS installation kit
from the MIPS FTP site, bootstrap install the OS, then 
install the sources and native tools.  

See ftp://ftp.mips.com/pub/linux/mips/.  I've got a web
site at http://www.paralogos.com/mipslinux/ with pointers
to the relevant FTP directories at MIPS, and an HTML
version of the setup and installation procedure.

One word of warning.  The Atlas design uses a Philips
"super I/O" chip that has some bugs.  Specifically, the
ethernet interface is wonky under load.  It works well
enough for the boot PROM monitor (YAMON) to be
able to boot the Linux kernel from your TFTP server
completely reliably, but under serious FTP or NFS
traffic, it tends to lose interrupts/packets.  I *strongly*
recommend putting an AMD PCnet PCI card in the
Atlas' PCI slot.   The driver should already be built
into the kernel binaries on the MIPS FTP site.

            Regards,

            Kevin K.

Atlas Board!

[Nicu Popovici]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 366 bytes --]

Hello ,

I want to ask few questions about an Atlas board. Who has such a board
maybe will give me some tips to have an working Linux on that machine.

1. What type of RAM do I need ?
2. I want to cross - compile the CVS linux kernel for Mips but I failed
on a i686. Could anyone tell me if I try to compile the kernel on Atlas
board I will  succeed.

Regards,
Nicu

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Re: Atlas Board!

[Brady Brown]

Nicu Popovici wrote:

> Hello ,
>
> I want to ask few questions about an Atlas board. Who has such a board
> maybe will give me some tips to have an working Linux on that machine.
>
> 1. What type of RAM do I need ?
> 2. I want to cross - compile the CVS linux kernel for Mips but I failed
> on a i686. Could anyone tell me if I try to compile the kernel on Atlas
> board I will  succeed.
>

We have linux running on several Atlas boards here. We are Cross-Compiling
the kernel successfully on an Intel machine. The cross tools we are
currently using are:
binutils-mipsel-linux-2.8.1-1
egcs-c++-mipsel-linux-1.0.3a-2
egcs-g77-mipsel-linux-1.0.3a-2
egcs-mipsel-linux-1.0.3a-2
egcs-libstdc++-mipsel-linux-2.8.0-2
egcs-objc-mipsel-linux-1.0.3a-2

These are available at
ftp://oss.sgi.com/pub/linux/mips/crossdev/i386-linux/mipsel-linux/
Note: the binutils version 2.9.5-1 gave us some problems when we tried it
so we are still using 2.8.1-1
--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Brady Brown (bbrown@ti.com)       Work:(801)619-6103
Texas Instruments: Broadband Access Group
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

ATLAS board!

[Nicu Popovici]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 250 bytes --]

Hello,

I have an Atlas board and now I am struggling to setup a Linux on it. I
have few questions
1. After I will install Linux on the board, it will function as a
standalone computer ?
2 Do I need Yamon after  installing Linux on it ?

Thanks
Nicu

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Re: ATLAS board!

[nick]

Pardon my ignorance, but what is a Atlas board?
	Thanks
		Nick

On Sun, 29 Oct 2000, Nicu Popovici wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> I have an Atlas board and now I am struggling to setup a Linux on it. I
> have few questions
> 1. After I will install Linux on the board, it will function as a
> standalone computer ?
> 2 Do I need Yamon after  installing Linux on it ?
> 
> Thanks
> Nicu
> 

Re: ATLAS board!

[Ralf Baechle]

On Sun, Oct 29, 2000 at 04:35:20PM -0500, nick@snowman.net wrote:

> Pardon my ignorance, but what is a Atlas board?

A MIPS evaluation board.

  Ralf

Re: ATLAS board!

[Brady Brown]

Nicu Popovici wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I have an Atlas board and now I am struggling to setup a Linux on it. I
> have few questions
> 1. After I will install Linux on the board, it will function as a
> standalone computer ?

We have not used it as a stand-alone system here (only as a development
platform) but the board does have all the peripheral in's and out's to be
a stand-alone box.

>
> 2 Do I need Yamon after  installing Linux on it ?
>
> Thanks
> Nicu

There is BIOS type functionality in Yamon that is needed to be able to
boot Linux (Bootup, PCI enumeration, low level hardware initialization
etc). If you were to write your own boot-up and low-level startup routines
and then write an OS loader that could boot a kernel image from the drive,
then you could conceivably boot Linux on the box without Yamon.

Re: ATLAS board!

[Carsten Langgaard]

The loader in the prom-monitor (YAMON), doesn't understand the elf-format,
you have to convert your kernel image to a SREC format.
You can do it the following way:

objcopy -O srec vmlinux vmlinux.srec

/Carsten



Nicu Popovici wrote:

> Hello ,
>
> I have an Atlas board with a mips processor. I managed to cross compile
> a MIPS kernel on our I686 machines but when I try to load the kernel
> image on the mips with the following command ( I do not know other way
> and if there is one please let me know ) "load
> tftp:/linux/mipseb/vmlinux "  I get the following error
>
> About to load tftp://192.168.200.1/linux/mipseb/di_vmlinux5000
> Press Ctrl-C to break
> Error : Line too long
> Diag  : Line 1, ELF
>
> Can anyone help me ?
>
> Regards,
> Nicu

--
_    _ ____  ___   Carsten Langgaard   Mailto:carstenl@mips.com
|\  /|||___)(___   MIPS Denmark        Direct: +45 4486 5527
| \/ |||    ____)  Lautrupvang 4B      Switch: +45 4486 5555
  TECHNOLOGIES     2750 Ballerup       Fax...: +45 4486 5556
                   Denmark             http://www.mips.com

ATLAS board!

[Nicu Popovici]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 489 bytes --]

Hello ,

I have an Atlas board with a mips processor. I managed to cross compile
a MIPS kernel on our I686 machines but when I try to load the kernel
image on the mips with the following command ( I do not know other way
and if there is one please let me know ) "load
tftp:/linux/mipseb/vmlinux "  I get the following error

About to load tftp://192.168.200.1/linux/mipseb/di_vmlinux5000
Press Ctrl-C to break
Error : Line too long
Diag  : Line 1, ELF

Can anyone help me ?

Regards,
Nicu

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