[Voyage-linux] Installing freedos - updating ALIX BIOS

[Edwin Whitelaw]

Mike,

Could you elaborate a bit on how you got freedos and the ALIX bios 
update to work?

I've got an old 64M CF and a bunch of newer 256 and up.  Trying to use 
the 64M. 

In Linux, fdisk /dev/sdm and created a Linux (ext2) partition made bootable

The dd looks like it completes without error with:

d2300:/u1/nrvu-shared/ALIX# dd if=freedos_alixupdate_0.99.img of=/dev/sdm
16065+0 records in
16065+0 records out
8225280 bytes (8.2 MB) copied, 16.4155 seconds, 501 kB/s

After the dd, fdisk shows:

Disk /dev/sdm: 64 MB, 64094720 bytes
243 heads, 49 sectors/track, 10 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 11907 * 512 = 6096384 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdm1   *           1           3       15648+   6  FAT16
Partition 1 has different physical/logical beginnings (non-Linux?):
     phys=(0, 1, 1) logical=(0, 1, 15)
Partition 1 has different physical/logical endings:
     phys=(1, 242, 49) logical=(2, 153, 49)


mount /dev/sdm1 /mnt/cf

and mount | grep sdm shows

/dev/sdm1 on /mnt/cf type vfat (rw)

However, trying to boot yields:

PC Engines ALIX.3 v0.98
640 KB Base Memory
261120 KB Extended Memory

01F0 Master 848A SanDisk SDCFB-64
Phys C/H/S 978/4/32 Log C/H/S 978/4/32
.Error!.

Can you see where I've erred?  Obviously being able to update the BIOS 
is a necessary thing so I would appreciate anyone's suggestion on where 
I've gone wrong with this approach or perhaps a better way to do it 
altogether.  When I last update BIOS on the WRAPs I used XMODEM over 
serial connection to write the BIOS.  Is that still possible?

TIA,

Edwin
> K, so here we go.
> I have an Alix3c2 also experienced the lockup problem.
> What i did was i put freedos3 from the pcengines site on my CF after formatting
> it to ext2 then dd'ing the image file to the disk. Additionally had to browse
> the directories (i like dolphin) and include the alix2.bin file!!! -- can be
> obtained from the .99 bios .zip
> after running the flashupdate i was able to boot voyage flawlessly.
> now, on to adding the rite packages ;)
>
> Please addmyself to the list as well.
>
>
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> Voyage-linux at list.voyage.hk
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>   

-- 
<=+=+=+==+=+=+==+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=>
Edwin Whitelaw, P.E.
New River Valley Unwired, LLC
2200 Lonesome Dove Dr
Christiansburg, VA 24073
540-239-0318