返回列表 发帖

Upgrading the PROM on the Fulong Mini PC... or how to get 1GB RAM working

Hi,

It has been a long while since I've been on these forums, but yes, I'm still about, and still working on Gentoo's support of this platform.  I have a couple of X-related queries that I'll look into once I'm finished with university for the year. :-)

In the meantime, my laptop, a P4-Mobile machine with 2GB of DDR400 RAM died recently.  The RAM in it is brand new, so I figured I'd use that to upgrade the two Fulong computers here to 1GB each.  Some time ago one of those Fulongs died, but it was replaced under warranty (to which I'm thankful), thus it now runs a newer PROM revision.  That one works with 1GB just fine, and currently is happily compiling some Python modules.

The one that remained behind however... when I installed the 1GB stick in it, it seemed to work... but when Linux started booting, it immediately panicked.  I've tried swapping both sticks between the units -- the older unit still failed.  I've re-installed the 512MB stick I had, and it's running okay now.

I've been told a PROM is the way to go here, but I don't know the procedure for flashing the PROM chip.  Is there some guide in English I can follow?  I'm not sure Google's translation service can be trusted to translate a critical procedure that could brick the device.

Also, in the event of the device getting trashed, is there a means of recovery?

Thanks in advance.
Stuart Longland (aka Redhatter, VK4MSL)
Gentoo/MIPS Developer
请注意, 我不会讲中文, 需要依靠翻译器翻译。

I also would like to know how the 2F box can use 1G memory

TOP

I'd like to know that, too.

TOP

It's also happened in the new loongson 2F box and waited to be solved for a long time.
I don't know how to fix this problem.

But for the 2E box, there is an upgradeable PMON version.
http://www.lemote.com/download/download_117.html
========================
pmon更新说明

最后更新:2007-10-09

更新步骤:
1.把最新的pmon.bin文件下载放到/boot/
2.重启进入pmon命令行,键入如下命令
        load -r -f bfc00000 /dev/fs/ext2@wd0/boot/pmon.bin
稍等片刻,pmon烧写成功,升级完成

注:
1. 命令中的bfc00000是烧写的地址,不能写错
2. 如果发现烧写命令写错,并且已经开始烧写,请等待烧写完成,不要重启,运行中的pmon能够多次执行烧写命令,因此可以再次键入正确的命令进行升级。
=======================
It says:
1. Copy pmon.bin to /boot/
2. Reboot, go to pmon command prompt / console, use the command below:

load -r -f bfc00000 /dev/fs/ext2@wd0/boot/pmon.bin

Wait for a while, then the upgrade will be successfully finished.

If the upgrade is failed or aborted, do not reboot your computer, make sure you type in the right command above and execute it again.

Good luck.


为什么就找不到一台低功耗高性能的无线路由+NAS+视频共享播放服务器呢?龙芯能做到吗?

我等啊等啊等……

TOP

the command   < load -r -f bfc00000 ****  >  is working to 2E and 2F.

**** stand for  file in your disk(just like /dev/fs/ext2@wd0/boot/pmon.bin) ,or a direction in tftp server in LAN(for example load -r -f bfc00000 tftp://172.16.0.10/pmon.bin) ,and even in usb disk /dev/fs/ext2@usb0/pmon.bin.

TOP

http://www.lemote.com/download/download_117.html

what new feature does this pmon have?

TOP

Thanks :-)

Got it all going.  It was a bit touch-and-go for a while.  I successfully flashed the PROM, but of course I neglected to note down the variables al and karg, which specify the auto-load kernel and kernel arguments respectively.  I still had the 512MB stick, so I figured I'd look on the PMON2000 site, I boot the machine by hand (load /dev/fs/ext2... g console=tty0...) log in, and have a squiz.  Can't find them anywhere.

So I trundle over to the other box, reboot it, and extract those variables from there.  Thankfully I had that box as a reference. :-)  I shut the newly flashed box down to install the 1GB stick of RAM.  Got the variable names from the other box.

I install the RAM, put the case back together, power the unit up.  No video... uhh ohh.  I open the box again, swap back to the 512MB stick, and try it with the case open.  It starts this time.  Turns out the 1GB stick wasn't quite seated properly... on re-installation, the system booted with the 1GB stick.
  1. stuartl@taijia ~ $ cat /proc/meminfo
  2. MemTotal:      1035584 kB
  3. MemFree:        822768 kB
  4. Buffers:         18064 kB
  5. Cached:         112640 kB
  6. SwapCached:          0 kB
  7. Active:         117280 kB
  8. Inactive:        68000 kB
  9. SwapTotal:     4855760 kB
  10. SwapFree:      4855760 kB
  11. Dirty:             352 kB
  12. Writeback:           0 kB
  13. AnonPages:       54608 kB
  14. Mapped:          43360 kB
  15. Slab:            16304 kB
  16. SReclaimable:     6112 kB
  17. SUnreclaim:      10192 kB
  18. PageTables:       2672 kB
  19. NFS_Unstable:        0 kB
  20. Bounce:              0 kB
  21. CommitLimit:   5373552 kB
  22. Committed_AS:   651968 kB
  23. VmallocTotal: 137438953472 kB
  24. VmallocUsed:       832 kB
  25. VmallocChunk: 137438952640 kB
  26. stuartl@taijia ~ $ uname -a
  27. Linux taijia 2.6.23.14-mipsgit-20080206-lm2e #1 Wed Feb 20 23:28:06 EST 2008 mips64 ICT Loongson-2 V0.2  FPU V0.1 lemote-fulong GNU/Linux
复制代码


I'll make a note of this on the blog, since I'm sure others will hit the same issue.  Thanks again for the assistance. :-)

Update: My guide is here: http://stuartl.longlandclan.yi.org/blog/2008/10/27/fulong-1gb/

[ Last edited by Redhatter at 2008-10-27 22:53 ]
Stuart Longland (aka Redhatter, VK4MSL)
Gentoo/MIPS Developer
请注意, 我不会讲中文, 需要依靠翻译器翻译。

TOP

新的pmon 支持 /boot/boot.cfg , like  /boot/grub/menu.lst
debian6:
http://www.bjlx.org.cn/loongson/install

TOP

thanks, good to know this,

TOP

Can this  be used on 2F? The pmon1.1 download link seems only to be used on 2E. Is there any solution on 2F?

TOP

返回列表