Subject: Re: Soekris
To: current-users@netbsd.org, Port-i386 <port-i386@netbsd.org>
From: Peter Seebach <seebs@plethora.net>
List: current-users
Date: 05/08/2003 05:02:27
In message <20030508095030.GA28031@pyy.embedtronics.fi>, Jukka Marin writes:
>1. The boot delay (5-sec countdown before kernel load) does not work.
>   Soekris proceeds to load the kernel immediately, so we can't change
>   the name of the kernel that is loaded.

Curiously, true also on VirtualPC.  I don't know if that's a coincidence.

>2. Serial ports "duplicate" outgoing characters every now and then.  When
>   a character is duplicated, the previous character is lost.  Example:

>   kbc selftsst: ffffffff

I think I saw that once or twice, then I did nothing I remember and it
magically got better.

>The Kingston CF cards failed to boot completely until we changed the
>NetBSD bootloader to read only one sector at a time off the CF.  Some
>other cards did not have this problem.  Both cards report that only
>one sector can be read/written per command and both cards work OK
>under NetBSD, so I don't know why the original bootloader didn't work
>with the Kingston card.

BIOS issues, probably.  FWIW, I've been told in the past that a lot of
non-SanDisk brands have problems like this.

>BTW, we have a simple driver for NetBSD 1.6 which can control the GPIO
>signals of the Soekris boards.  We use it to strobe the external watchdog
>and reset external systems.

Oh, cool!

-s