zet.aluzina.org

Yes, do it!!

El 10 de junio de 2010 19:53, wicky Zhang <wicky.zhang@gmail.com> escribió:
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Ok. Can I post those mails to the forum directly?

2010/6/11 Zeus Gómez Marmolejo <zeus@aluzina.org>

Hi Wicky,

Please use the forums for these questions, as more people are willing to answer you and others can see the answers.

El 10 de junio de 2010 16:24, wicky Zhang <wicky.zhang@gmail.com> escribió:

Hi Zeus,

Many thanks for your rapid reply, pls see the in-lined mark.


2010/6/10 Zeus Gómez Marmolejo <zeus@aluzina.org>

Hi Wicky,

I'm very glad to hear that you plan to introduce it in your course. Here in Barcelona, they are teaching it in a Master in Computer Architecture. About your questions:

Oh, Could you pls share me more information about this course? From the forum, i know you are in charge of some training about OS in some company. am I right?


I have little documentation on that. The only thing I have is the presentation that I gave:

http://zet.aluzina.org/images/d/d8/Pres.pdf

I hope that can be helpful. The students pipelined the processor, as right now is not pipelined.



1. The Xilinx ML403 is a bit outdated now. We are working now with the Altera DE1 which has support for graphics modes and the latest development. We dropped support for the ML403 about one year ago... So I would suggest buying the Altera DE1 board instead (it's much cheaper than the ML403).

Yeah, I know ML403 is outdated. We are a member of Xilinx XUP and we have the XUPV5 board with Virtex-5 Lx110t FPGA. How about this board?

Well, I think that board should be great! But anyway you would find it more useful the Altera DE1 to make the port instead of the ML403.



Zet doesn't support Linux because Linux started to work in a 386 when Linus Torvalds designed it in 1991. Unfortunately, Zet is not 32-bit. It's 16-bit so it wouldn't be able to boot Linux (for the moment)... We are working on it, but it may take a while...

Yeah, I know the standard kernel only works for 386 and above. But with the amazing fans all over the world, nothing is impossible. I found the some guys have ported Linux to an IBM PC/XT, so I have the idea to run it in zet x86

Yes, there is this project called ELKS. http://elks.sourceforge.net/

This should work fine on Zet. But I don't think that has many common things with linux.



2. I would say that the most important part of the BIOS is the boot process (starting at post) till it boots MS-DOS. And of course the disk access, which is the one that is loading sectors from the SD card and boot.

If I change dos to linux, do I need to modify bios? i know nothing about it.

No, nothing has to be done in the bios. Linux does everything on itself. But if you are interested in opensource, you can take FreeDOS as is everything open source.




3. The forums have another registration. You have to register again but in the forum. It will ask you a username: zet and password: x86, then you can register a new username!

Thanks, I will register an account.

Regards!
Zeus.

2010/6/10 wicky Zhang <wicky.zhang@gmail.com>

Hi Zeus,

I have downloaded your great project zet-x86 and plan to introduce it to our course named "Principle of Microcomputer and Interface Technology“, a very popular course in China for almost all college students of EE, CS, Mechtronics...

After a few try on ML403, I have some questions as following:

1. Can zet ML403 support Linux and Howto?

2. What is the most important part of your BIOS? It is really hard for me to fully understand.

3. I have registered in http://zet.aluzina.org, but can't login the forum.

I am looking forward to your reply, Many thanks.


Wicky

Hi Zeus,

From your kindly reply, Can I draw the following conclusion:

1. Porting Linux is not a problem if ELKS is ready for IBM PC/XT.

2. ELKS is quite different with the traditional Linux, it don't makes any sense.

3. There is no need to modify the BIOS when porting Linux.


Another question:
If we add some new peripheral to wishbone bus such as USB host, do we need to know BIOS?

Hi Wicky,

That's right!! Linux doesn't use the BIOS at all... Only for booting (to load the sectors from the SD card), but once is done the BIOS is not used at all. So right now the BIOS have support for booting Linux. What it doesn't have is the processor, which is still 16-bit.

About adding the USB-host, it doesn't need any BIOS support either. It depends solely on the operating system and its drivers, so I imagine it would be possible when handling it under MS-DOS...

This might be a little off subject, but still I think very interesting.
http://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl
Linux was originally developed from the Unix tree and was originally 32 bit, but the original unix was 16 bit. It is interesting to look at the progression.