PCEngines alix2c3 (Substitute for WRAP) boot failes

dirom · Nov 9, 2007, 8:08 AM

Hello,

Can anyone explain me how to downgrade the bios to 0.92 ?
Can i use the freedos image from pcengines.ch on any 128mb compact flash or does only the cf128al have a geometry of 1002/8/32? ???

i have many 128mb cf cards here, but will they work with the freedos image without any modifications?

Thanks in advance

EarlBacid · Nov 9, 2007, 4:09 PM

ok, now I have the problem that I don't have a CF Card with this phys.

Does anybody know how I can use this FreeDOS (or another) image with a larger CF Card?

Everytime I tried to boot from my 512 MB CF Card I got the error "Invalid or damaged Bootable partition".
Th CF card itsels seems to work with the image, it readable with windows so I can put the BIOS file on it.

luma · Nov 9, 2007, 4:14 PM

Please try with WinImage. I add success with it. But I don't have any howto ready. And I don't really remember :) Sorry

cmb · Nov 15, 2007, 3:37 AM

I believe the boot should be working with the newest BIOS now, can someone please verify with RC3?

vangual · Nov 15, 2007, 8:01 AM

@cmb:

I believe the boot should be working with the newest BIOS now, can someone please verify with RC3?

embedded snapshot dated "2007-Nov-14 11:11:50" still does not get past "Starting DHCP service…done." with ALIX bios 0.98b

Clown · Nov 15, 2007, 2:53 PM

@cmb:

I believe the boot should be working with the newest BIOS now, can someone please verify with RC3?

Same here with 0.98b Bios, Boot until DHCP (even with connected network cables).

fab · Nov 16, 2007, 11:57 AM

@Clown:

@cmb:

I believe the boot should be working with the newest BIOS now, can someone please verify with RC3?

Same here with 0.98b Bios, Boot until DHCP

exactly the same with my installation.

Fabian

covex · Nov 20, 2007, 7:43 AM

just got mine… i don't know what version of bios it is running on but it booted up right out of the box with 1.2rc3
in putty i can't see the begining of the boot as it is all jebberish and clears out only when kernel starts.

vangual · Nov 20, 2007, 8:02 AM

@covex:

just got mine… i don't know what version of bios it is running on but it booted up right out of the box with 1.2rc3
in putty i can't see the begining of the boot as it is all jebberish and clears out only when kernel starts.

This is because your terminal settings only match kernel output but the bios is set to something else. (Default would be the 38400)

Set your terminal to 38400 speed, boot it up again. You will see the bios output normally but the kernel gibberish now. At that point you can 1) see what BIOS yours has come with 2) go into bios options and set the bios serial speed to the same that the kernel uses (9600) and then change your terminal speed back to 9600 and you should see both bios and kernel output.

Also I'm curious did you boot a completely fresh embedded snapshot or one that already had a previous configuration?

covex · Nov 20, 2007, 5:35 PM

thnx! i'll try it tonight. setup is clean 1024 embedded image on 2gig cf.

covex · Nov 21, 2007, 2:13 AM

ok. mine says 0.98

vangual · Nov 21, 2007, 7:04 AM

@covex:

ok. mine says 0.98

Thank you for checking.

I've just tried the 1024mb image (from http://snapshots.pfsense.com/FreeBSD6/RELENG_1_2/embedded/1024/pfSense-1024MB.img.gz) dated "2007-Oct-14 13:06:02" and surprisingly it does seem to work! Makes it seem like that post-DHCP freeze bug must have made it into the normal (non-1024) embedded image snapshots somewhen after the above date.

covex · Nov 21, 2007, 7:33 AM

pls! be carefull!

mine died after few reboots. now it wont boot saying there is an error on password file :-
i reapplied an image(1024 one) and it boots again…

i can't downgrade the bios... i can't even get into bios... del key wont work... anybody knows how to create freedos image on 256mb cf? i tried msdos5 but it didn't work.

vangual · Nov 21, 2007, 7:41 AM

@covex:

i can't downgrade the bios… i can't even get into bios... del key wont work... anybody knows how to create freedos image on 256mb cf? i tried msdos5 but it didn't work.

To get into the bios you need to press "S" while it's counting memory. (Make sure to set the terminal speed as shown in the posts above or the keypress likely won't be registered.)

As for the freedos image, I haven't tried personally but I'd fetch the freedos image available on the pcengines alix page, mount the image, try to inject the wanted bios firmware file, unmount it and dd it onto the cf card.

I'm not doing it myself because so far I didn't find the current version 0.98b downloadable anywhere. And I'm not downgrading when I can't go back to the newest release.

covex · Nov 21, 2007, 7:57 AM

As for the freedos image, I haven't tried personally but I'd fetch the freedos image available on the pcengines alix page, mount the image, try to inject the wanted bios firmware file, unmount it and dd it onto the cf card.

dd doesn't work because of the geometry of my cf. it reqires 1002/8/32 and mine is 695/15/48

what do you mean by "mount the image"?

btw my bios says 0.98 not 0.98b

Clown · Nov 21, 2007, 8:02 AM

@vangual:

I'm not doing it myself because so far I didn't find the current version 0.98b downloadable anywhere. And I'm not downgrading when I can't go back to the newest release.

You can write Pascal Dornier (the man behind PCengines), he will mail you the newest bios after you write him.

As I don't know if it's ok for PCEngines I don't post the 0.98b bios here…

vangual · Nov 21, 2007, 1:27 PM

Mr. Dornier has promptly put up the most recent (at the time of writing this) bios on the pcengines website. The most recent version is 0.98d which apparently has one of the fixes that happened between 0.92 and 0.98 as a toggle option in the bios now. (Full changelog is in the zip file.)
I'm trying to get this bios update applied but getting freedos to boot off my cf is indeed much more of a hassle than I had imagined. If anyone has any hints on how to properly adjust the freedos bootloader to new CHS values, or generally how to apply a bootable freedos image to a cf disk connected to an usb reader I'd appreciate it.

fridaynoon · Nov 21, 2007, 7:58 PM

I just received Alix boards from PCEngines. I did not have the chance to put my hand on these, for working problems, but I thint that what I made can help you in creating a boot CF image. I did not work with freedos, as I had an old floppy bootdisk from W98, but if freedos uses the same file names…
I work with Windows XP
I put the DOS floppy on A: and a CF (8MB) on my USB writer
Downloaded SP27608.exe from HP and executed it (it is a USB format tool from HP)
The resulting CF sometimes is only readable when you dismount&mount.
When I see at the CF in exlorer everything looks good.
Tomorrow I hope I can try it.

Hope that helps.

covex · Nov 21, 2007, 11:10 PM

it doesn't work with freedos. when i try this with msdos 5 alix shows me "j" right after memory test and that is it.

hk · Nov 22, 2007, 7:33 AM

With latest BIOS ( http://www.pcengines.ch/file/alixb098d.zip ) it's working now!