PLOP not working on my motherboard

[doveman]

Hi,

I tested PLOP on my motherboard (Gigabyte 8I848) but didn't have much luck unfortunately.

I tried testing it a few ways:

1) Boot from HD into Grub4Dos
Run unmodified plpbt.bin
Select USB and it displays:

Loading EHCI Driver
Searching on Hosts
Host 1
Port 7 - No Mass Storage Device

and stays like that.

2) Boot from USB into NTLDR
Run grldr
Run modified plpbt.bin (plpcfgbt stm=hidden cnt=on cntval=1 dbt=usb plpbt.bin)
PLOP fails to load

3) Boot from USB into Grub4Dos
Run unmodified plpbt.bin
PLOP loads but USB keyboard doesn't work
Selecting USB (with PS/2 keyboard) stops at the same "Port 7 - No Mass Storage Device" message

Note for some (annoying!) reason my USB keyboard always works in boot.ini/NTLDR and in Grub4Dos booted from HD, but never in Grub4Dos booted from USB stick or in XP Text Setup. Also, Grub4Dos freezes at the menu when booted from USB stick and I have to press my power button quickly twice to unfreeze it.

[Elmar]

hi,
please try this test version http://download.plop.at/files/tmp/plpbt-test2.zip

regards
elmar

[doveman]

Thanks elmar

I'm afraid that version didn't make any difference. I did test 2) differently, booting straight to Grub4Dos rather than NTLDR and then running modified plpbt.bin but it still failed to load. The other two test results were the same

[qiet72]

PLoP takes over the usb controller from the bios so the keyboard is not controlled by the bios anymore.  If you want to use your usb keyboard after plop loads, then you have to wait for plop to have usb keyboard support or make plop load a system that can control the keyboard again such as linux or windows.

qiet72

[doveman]

In fact my USB keyboard does work with PLOP when I boot from HD (as it does with Grub4Dos). It's only when I boot from USB stick that the keyboard won't work in PLOP or Grub4Dos (but is fine with NTLDR).

[qiet72]

yes that is correct, up until you select "USB" from the plop menu, the keyboard is under bios control.

qiet72

[maanu]

have you tested the latest available version ?

[doveman]

I've done some tests with v5.0.4 and it's not working any better unfortunately.

Basically, if I boot from HD my USB keyboard works in NTLDR, Grub4DOS and PLOP but if I boot from USB stick, my USB keyboard ONLY works in NTLDR.

I also tried loading booting my USB stick into NTLDR and loading plpbtldr.bin from there and PLOP loaded but seemed to have frozen, as NEITHER my USB or PS/2 keyboard would work. If I boot Grub4DOS from HD and then load NTLDR and from there load plpbtldr.bin, both keyboards work fine.

After booting from both HD and USB stick I tried changing the USB mode in PLOP to USB1.1 Mode 1/Mode 2 and that helped a bit, as PLOP first tried the EHCI driver as usual and then when that didn't work it tried the UHCI driver, which did find something but didn't get very far and just displayed the following and froze there, requiring me to do a hard reboot:

Booting PLOP Boot Manager

Filesystem type fat, partition type 0x0c
[Linux-zimage, setup=0x800, size=0x9c54]

j

[Elmar]

what do you try to start from the usb stick?

can you try to start freedos from the usb stick with the boot manager boot cd?

elmar

[doveman]

When I select USB in PLOP I assume it's trying to start whatever bootloader is on there. It's currently set to Win NT 5 MBR but I've also tried it with Grub4DOS 0.4.4 MBR.

So I can't actually boot the USB stick from PLOP, let alone run any other software. I can boot the USB stick from the BIOS however and then run various floppy images/ISO's from Grub4DOS.

I'm afraid I don't have a optical drive connected to that PC so I can't do any testing with the boot cd.

[Elmar]

what happen when you boot without usb stick connected, then start plop boot manager, then connect the stick and then boot usb?

[doveman]

The same as if I boot with the USB stick connected (whether I boot from the stick or HD).

If I try the default settings, PLOP freezes at the "Port 7 - No Mass Storage Device" message. If I change it to USB1.1 mode then it freezes at the same point as before on the "Booting PLOP Boot Manager" screen.

[Elmar]

are there any usb options in the bios? somethig like disk legacy?

[doveman]

Haven't seen anything like that. There's Enable USB controller, Enable USB2 mode, Enable USB Keyboard and Enable USB Mouse. I've got all but the Mouse enabled.

I'll double-check there's nothing else when I get a minute.

[doveman]

I've checked carefully now and there's no other USB options in the BIOS. I pressed Ctrl-F1 to make sure I could see all the advanced options.

[Elmar]

hmm, for the moment i have to say i have no solution. i have to test on this hardware to see whats going wrong, but i dont think that i get it somewhere.

[doveman]

OK, thanks for trying to help me. I'll keep an eye out for new versions and try them just in case something you change happens to make it work on my board.