I'm trying add the Plop Boot Manager to a BIOS. There's more than enough free space left in it, so I just generate & add the PBM ROM. Unfortunately, I cannot get the actual BIOS to load the PBM.
I only tried adding it as a PCI option ROM so far, and with both INT19 and INT18 options.
My BIOS does not have any option to perform a network boot. Do I really have to replace an existing network option ROM to be able to let my BIOS boot it? What can I try to get my BIOS to run PBM somehow?
The board I'm trying to flash is a SunPCI 2 board. I can provide more info if needed.
do you have the bios user manual as pdf? i want to see some screenshots of the bios.
There are multiple manuals in PDF for the SunPCI II board, but I couldn't find any with BIOS screenshots. Because the board runs inside a Solaris system, I just made screenshots myself with ksnapshot. I put them online here:
https://plus.google.com/photos/108919478422583964698/albums/5763516853050402033
I was wrong about there being no network boot option. There is a LAN option, but it doesn't seem to function. There is an IDE controller, but there is no connector soldered onto it, so I cannot use it. The operating system is normally loaded from an image file on the Solaris filesystem. The BIOS provides access to DOS and there are also special Windows drivers to deal with this. I think the RMIPC driver at the beginning is related to this. Setting the primary boot device to SCSI allows the system to boot.
are the screenshots from a modified bios or from the original rom?
This happens to be the modified BIOS, but I do not think there are differences compared to the original ROM.
use the original and make a screenshot like the 7th picture
Done:
https://plus.google.com/photos/108919478422583964698/albums/5763516853050402033/5763569359054561730
It looks exactly the same as far as I can see.
are you able to list the bios parts with cbrom or another tool?
Yes, I also used cbrom to add the PBM rom:
julius@wijsvinger:~/sunpci$ wine CBROM32_198.EXE original/bios.bin /D
Z:\home\julius\sunpci\CBROM32_198.EXE V1.98 [08/27/08] (C)Phoenix Technologies 2001-2008
******** original/bios.bin BIOS component ********
No. Item-Name Original-Size Compressed-Size Original-File-Name
================================================================================ 0. System BIOS 20000h(128.00K)1596Eh(86.36K)chimera.BIN
1. XGROUP CODE 08660h(33.59K)05B2Ah(22.79K)awardext.rom
2. CPU micro code 08800h(34.00K)04D97h(19.40K)CPUCODE.BIN
3. ACPI table 02755h(9.83K)00FD5h(3.96K)ACPITBL.BIN
4. Other(1C00:0000) 02000h(8.00K)012DEh(4.72K)rmipc.rom
5. Other(2000:0000) 02000h(8.00K)012DEh(4.72K)rmipc1.rom
6. VGA ROM[1] 08000h(32.00K)04AEAh(18.73K)sis630.vga
Total compress code space = 35000h(212.00K)
Total compressed code size = 282AAh(160.67K)
Remain compress code space = 0CD56h(51.33K)
** Micro Code Information **
Update ID CPUID | Update ID CPUID | Update ID CPUID | Update ID CPUID
------------------+--------------------+--------------------+-------------------SLOT1 13 00000630| PPGA 11 00000681| PPGA 10 00000683| PPGA 03 00000665
SLOT1 20 00000632| SLOT1 34 00000633| SLOT1 35 00000634| SLOT1 40 00000650
SLOT1 40 00000651| SLOT1 2A 00000652| SLOT1 10 00000653| SLOT1 0A 00000660
SLOT1 06 00000670| SLOT1 03 00000671| SLOT1 10 00000672| SLOT1 0E 00000673
SLOT1 14 00000680| SLOT1 0D 00000681|
I did some more investigating. I tried adding ROMOS to the BIOS as an ISA option ROM. That one doesn't seem to work either. I guess this BIOS doesn't really have a way of getting it to execute extra option ROMs.