Installation to ALIX 3c3 board

[Bottlegreen Elderflower]

Ok, the paper clip thing worked, so its the VGA cable or monitor, but I will eventually need the system to run with out a monitor, which still means a kernel recompile.

[DefineByte]

To get the source for your existing kernel you'd run

apt-get build-dep linux-image-$(uname -r)
apt-get source linux-image-$(uname -r)

then follow the tutorial from that point on (I must admit I couldn't personally get Ubuntu's kernel to build).

It does take you through how to change the configuration. You use

make menuconfig

or

make xconfig

to make any changes you want (xconfig is probably slightly easier to use).

Of course there are alternative tutorials out there such as this. There's slightly more faffing around setting up the config with that one though.

[Bottlegreen Elderflower]

Ok, great, thanks so much, I will be trying this soon. I used Virtual Box on my Windows pc to install to a CF card successfully, very handy. I also inserted a very fine wire between pins 6 and 12 so that I would not have to disconnect the VGA cable during boot up, to stick a jumper in. This worked, but I still want to recompile the kernel. As soon as some on unplugs the VGA cable I'll have to replace or fix the wire. I noticed xubuntu uses very nearly 100% of the proc almost all the time, it was getting very noticably warm. I hadn't looked at the power usage, but I can do that later. I am guessing there is a way to strip down the system to use minimal CPU, but then again I was running the GUI. Thanks.

Josh.

[DefineByte]

Just thought I'd mention the presence of a beta BIOS on the PC Engines site which is supposed to fix the VGA boot problem.

I haven't tried it myself, so if anyone does I'd be interested in the results.

[feh]

Has anybody exercised the video capability of these boards? Are they capable of higher resolutions (ie. 1280x720), or is 640x480 or 800x600 the practical limit?

Thanks.

[nephish]

OK, the last date of a post in this topic is a while back. Anyone manage to get debian or ubuntu on one of these ALIIX 3D3 boards? And if so, how?

thanks

[DataMatrix]

OK, the last date of a post in this topic is a while back. Anyone manage to get debian or ubuntu on one of these ALIIX 3D3 boards? And if so, how?

thanks

Yes, I've got Lenny (debian) to work with the 3D3, but only with a monitor attached. Otherwise it hangs after "Starting up..." and "Detecting EDD". As the PAPERCLIP approach seems too risky for me I am now trying to recompile the kernel. If it doesn't work I'll make a few phonecalls and see if someone knows how to trick the hardware into thinking that there is a monitor (I've heard that I'll need a 75 Omh resistor from the RGB pins to ground, but that sounds too much like "BRICK ALIX" and I'll try that as a last resort)
I'll write if I find something. Oh, and I've installed the debian with the debootstrap program, it's in jaunty's repositories. I made a grub-install from a chroot-ed shell (keep in mind that you need to tell it to install the bootloader on /dev/sdb or /dev/sdc, else you'll blow up your own computer's boot)
This might be helpful: http://debian-on-alix.blogspot.com/

[DefineByte]

Install this beta firmware and the hang should be fixed.

[DataMatrix]

I've recompiled the kernel (2.6.29.4) and now everything works smooth.
See my post here: http://blog.datamatrix-bg.net/?p=80 , there I have posted the .config file and also the generated .deb package.

Install this beta firmware and the hang should be fixed.

About that - there are alix0.bin and alix2.bin in there, which one?

PS: As it's running just fine with the recompiled kernel I have no intention in patching the bios (If it works, don't fix it )

[DefineByte]

I'd guess one was for the ALIX 1x and the other for the 3d3. You should'nt really have to worry about that though because sb.com will pick the right one for your board.

You would get HPET support too, so if you need that it might be worth it. Probably safer to do what you did though.