plop BM install to HDD-mbr on HP-ePC

[hazelem]

hi,

i came across 'plop bm' when i exchanged the old cd-rom drive for a dvd-writer a couple of years ago.
the issue was that the hp-epc bios did not see the new optical drive.
(the motherboard has two ide channels - both for master-jumpered drives -
with no subchannels / no slaves ;
the new slim-type optical drive is internally jumpered as slave or cable
select ; i could not find the needed 15 cm. long 44-pin to 50-pin cs cable to try it out).

i resolved this by installing 'plop bm' on a usb-pendrive and it boots the
optical or hdd flawlessly, but will not boot any usb device.
thus i installed 'plop bm' to the hdd using a floppy image written by 'rawrite2'
to a physical floppy disk.
NOW: 'plop bm' freezes upon displaying prompt "~if you see...press ctrl+esc".

***
the bios on this machine shows you a boot menu which varies with connected devices considered (by the bios) to be bootable.
since i had installed 'plop bm' to the hdd, i choose hdd - in order to boot it.
(with no other devices connected, the bios-boot-menu shows only hdd - as
it does not see the optical).
***

thereupon, i uninstalled 'plop bm' - using the "short" routine - and the hdd
boots well.

this hdd install problem may be of interest to people with similar hardware
setups, ie. notebooks, mini-pc`s ....

in esteem of plop`s skills,
gruesse aus budapest,
hazelem

[Elmar]

hi,

NOW: 'plop bm' freezes upon displaying prompt "~if you see...press ctrl+esc".

have you tried 5.0.11-rc1?

regards
elmar

[hazelem]

hi and thanks Elmar for a fast reaction !

the version i installed to hard disk was 5.0.10 - marked as stable.
i had overseen the display mode-switch, so i guess 'plop bm' defaults
to graphical mode and has no drivers for my onboard chipset =
intel 'i815', which belongs to quite a widespread family : 828xx.

THEN: - as i couldn't reach plop's setup [screen frozen] - i did
a new install of v. 5.0.10 using the text-mode switch, after having
read your answer to this issue in a thread on this forum.
*please feel free to insert link here, as i don't see it now*
IT WORKED FINE !
THEREUPON: i tried v. 5.0.11 rc1 - as you suggested, - proceeding
thus:
a. wrote 'plbtin.img' to physical floppy-disk [fd], using rawrite2.
b. booted machine with fd and hit 'install'; plop said: no backup file.
c. copied backup-file to fd using 'plpback.bin' from v. 5.0.10 fd and
   setting display switch to text mode - thinking i could change the
   mode from within the 'setup' item on 'plop bm' menu after bootup.
d. booted v. 5.0.11 from hard disk, tried changing display mode to
   graphical (not that i need it - just for kicks) and 'plop bm' didn't
   even let me change this - it fell back to text mode.
-----------
suggestion here : make text mode as default and let user change
this from the setup routine of the main menue. (if you find full-gui
on bootup so important, instruct people to do so - if they want
an elaborate gui.)
remark : i understand well that it is impossible to squeeze many
display drivers in the bootstrap of a hard disk, but so much the
better this approach of text-mode default.
perhaps you could put some display drivers on the install-media
and write a routine to load the appropriate driver upon install.
---------
apart from the display-issue, i couldn't choose to boot from more
than one usb device using the suggested ctrl > n command.
my board has two usb controllers, each with own irq (10,11) and
each with two ports.

thanks and gruesse,
hazelem
 

[Elmar]

THEREUPON: i tried v. 5.0.11 rc1 - as you suggested, - proceeding
thus:
a. wrote 'plbtin.img' to physical floppy-disk [fd], using rawrite2.
b. booted machine with fd and hit 'install'; plop said: no backup file.
c. copied backup-file to fd using 'plpback.bin' from v. 5.0.10 fd and
   setting display switch to text mode - thinking i could change the
   mode from within the 'setup' item on 'plop bm' menu after bootup.

ahh, i forgot the file in the image

d. booted v. 5.0.11 from hard disk, tried changing display mode to
   graphical (not that i need it - just for kicks) and 'plop bm' didn't
   even let me change this - it fell back to text mode.

thats ok, gfx modes does not work, so it falls back to the text mode.

suggestion here : make text mode as default and let user change
this from the setup routine of the main menue. (if you find full-gui
on bootup so important, instruct people to do so - if they want
an elaborate gui.)

no, gfx mode will be still the default. the fall back to text mode works, so its no longer a problem when gfx does not work.

apart from the display-issue, i couldn't choose to boot from more
than one usb device using the suggested ctrl > n command.
my board has two usb controllers, each with own irq (10,11) and
each with two ports.

what happened when you used ctrl?

elmar

[hazelem]

.....sorry for the delay - i did some linux installs on usb-sticks
in the meantime.....

ANSWER: when i hit ctrl, there came up the ehci driver, found
nothing and froze.  (repeated a few times hooking them up on
different hosts / ports - the same result)
in that instance, i had two sticks plugged in - both known to
be bootable via 'plop' when plugged in separately.
STRANGELY, the next day IT WORKED ! it showed the sticks on
either host / port.
THEN: i could boot the last stick found, but not any previous
one, without rebooting 'plop'.
THEREUPON, i found out that - by pressing 'n' after the last stick
found, i could escape [esc] back to 'plop' main menu, use ctrl > n
and choose the device to boot.
(...i had not found this in the docs).

NOW: with another syslinux installed to a third stick, i can boot
any of the three.
.... on the margin: are you planning to implement the new 'xHCI'
driver in 'plop' ? - perhaps it would simplify things.

THANKS,
hazelem

P.S. for those interested in the ehci / ohci / uhci matter, go to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Host_controller_interface
for a concise overview.

[Elmar]

found, i could escape [esc] back to 'plop' main menu, use ctrl > n
and choose the device to boot.
(...i had not found this in the docs).

you find this info in the section of the main menu
http://www.plop.at/en/bootmanager.html#bootmanager

.... on the margin: are you planning to implement the new 'xHCI'
driver in 'plop' ? - perhaps it would simplify things.
cise overview.

yes, there are plans to add xHCI for USB 3.0. two weeks ago, my primary development computer died and the new one has an USB 3.0 controller. so the chances are good that i add support for xHCI. but xHCI will not work with old controllers.

regards
elmar

[hazelem]

according to article in wikipedia (link above), the xHCI driver
SHOULD cover all usb controllers ;
WOULDN'T that be perfect !
- what is correct ?


***here the paragraph ::::::

Extensible Host Controller Interface

Extensible Host Controller Interface (xHCI) is the newest host controller standard that improves speed, power efficiency and virtualization over its predecessors. The goal was also to define a USB host controller to replace UHCI/OHCI/EHCI. It supports all USB device speeds (USB 3.0 SuperSpeed, USB 2.0 Low-, Full-, and High-speed, USB 1.1 Low- and Full-speed).

regards,
hazelem

[Elmar]

you can use xhci only when the controller support this standard. its a new standard and new controllers may or may not support this standard, but old controllers cannot support this standard, because the standard didn't exist when they where built.

regards
elmar

[hazelem]

ok, so it's the backwards-incompatibility hurdle :

with your above answer in mind, i read again the wiki article's
paragraph and realise that they are defining a NEW controller
(=host) along with its driver (xhci) ; this driver can handle all
devices (=guests) with a spec from usb-3.0 down to usb-1.1.

thus, the backwards-compatibility pertains only to the DEVICES
(~usb-sticks) connected to the new controller via xusb driver.
......this is also good to know, so people don't start throwing
away their old usb-sticks or -hdd-adapters.   

THOUGH :  how come that some people writing in this forum
praise your usb driver for giving them more speed using
usb-2.0 sticks on a usb--1.1 controller - at bootup !?

thanks and regards,
hazelem

[Elmar]

THOUGH :  how come that some people writing in this forum
praise your usb driver for giving them more speed using
usb-2.0 sticks on a usb--1.1 controller - at bootup !?

those people are talkig about the following situation:

pc with usb 2.0 controller (they also support usb 1.1)
bios supports usb boot, but bios boots with usb 1.1 speed (because of simply support for many usb devices like keyboard that has only usb 1.1 speed and usb 2.0 hard disks that have to support usb 1.1, ...)

so they boot usb (speed 1.1) running grub, starting the plop boot manager, booting again usb, plop takes best usable controller (in those case = usb 2.0) -> booting with usb 2.0 speed.

but my driver is not perfect, so it does not use the full power of usb 2.0

best regards
elmar

[hazelem]

sorry, been away for a while,...then installed some 5-6 mini (<150mb) live linuxes to usb-sticks - they all boot well using flop-bm installed to hdd ;;;;;
for the record ::::
machine is hp-epc40 (~2002 vintage) with usb1.1 controller - i left the
hp-boot-manager in bios eprom ; thus i could compare the bootup speed of your driver to that of the machine's driver - on just one of the sticks that would at all boot on the hp-manager - result : 

usb2.0 stick on usb1.1 controller runs 4-5x faster under flop-bm than under
hp-boot-manager ! ...... congratulations, but how come (what's going on) ?
perhaps hp uses usb1.0 mode for bootup ?

regards, hazelem

[Elmar]

usb2.0 stick on usb1.1 controller runs 4-5x faster under flop-bm than under
hp-boot-manager ! ...... congratulations, but how come (what's going on) ?

it seems my implementation of usb 1.1 is better than the one of your bios that makes me happy 

perhaps hp uses usb1.0 mode for bootup ?

they use usb 1.1
for usb 1.0 see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Serial_Bus#USB_1.0

best regards
elmar

[joseucker]

Quote from: hazelem on October 03, 2010, 12:33:42 PM

    found, i could escape [esc] back to 'plop' main menu, use ctrl > n
    and choose the device to boot.
    (...i had not found this in the docs).


you find this info in the section of the main menu
http://www.plop.at/en/bootmanager.html#bootmanager


Quote from: hazelem on October 03, 2010, 12:33:42 PM

    .... on the margin: are you planning to implement the new 'xHCI'
    driver in 'plop' ? - perhaps it would simplify things.
    cise overview.


yes, there are plans to add xHCI for USB 3.0. two weeks ago, my primary development computer died and the new one has an USB 3.0 controller. so the chances are good that i add support for xHCI. but xHCI will not work with old controllers.

regards
elmar

Hi,thank a lot of for your work.

¿The last version 5.0.11.2 has support for USB 3.0 express card?
I want to boot from one of this.