[Soekris] net4801 Bios update

[Erwin Geuens]

Hi Peter,

For the x-modem: I had the same problem with one 5501. Even when the  
communication was initiated at 19200, i needed to change the speed in  
the bios to 9600 and then xmodem worked fine. I only had this with one  
board, very strange.
So try this: force the bios to 9600N81, no flow control. I used  
Hyperterminal and selected classic xmodem (no 1K xmodem) and then it  
worked fine.

I hope this helps.

Erwin


On 24 Aug 2008, at 15:03, Peter J. Holzer wrote:

> Background: I'm trying to install Debian Etch on a net4801. The
> installation works, but grub aborts with an "Error 16" (filesystem
> corrupt) while loading stage 2. In a previous thread it was suggested
> that this might be a problem with ComBIOS version 1.29 and that
> upgrading to 1.30 (or newer) might help.[1]
>
> So I grabbed b4801_133.bin from http://www.soekris.com/downloads.htm,
> booted the net4801 into the monitor, issued a download command, and
> selected "send file -> xmodem" in minicom. The result looked like  
> this:
>
> +-----------[xmodem upload - Press CTRL-C to quit]------------+
> |Sending b4801_133.bin, 608 blocks: Give your local XMODEM rec|
> |eive command now.                                            |
> |Xmodem sectors/kbytes sent:   0/ 0kRetry 0: NAK on sector    |
> |Retry 0: NAK on sector                                       |
> |Retry 0: NAK on sector                                       |
> ...
> |Retry 0: NAK on sector                                       |
> |Retry 0: NAK on sector                                       |
> |Retry 0: Retry Count Exceeded                                |
> |                                                             |
> |Transfer incomplete                                          |
> |                                                             |
> | READY: press any key to continue...                         |
> +-------------------------------------------------------------+
>
> The serial port on the PC is a "real" serial port (no USB to RS-232
> adapter).
> Software flow control was off.
> I tried it with and without hardware flow control (though at 19200  
> bit/s
> I didn't expect flow control to be necessary) - same result.
> I also tried a block size of 1k instead of 128 Bytes - same result.
>
> Finally, I tried it with Hyperterm on a Windows PC. Didn't work  
> either,
> but the error messages were a bit different (something like  
> "unsolicited
> nak received" (translated from German)).
>
> 	hp
>
> [1] The OP in this thread got it to work with LILO instead of grub -
>    that's what I'll try next, but I think upgrading the BIOS should
>    work, too.
>
> -- 
>   _  | Peter J. Holzer    | Am Anfang war der Bug und der
> |_|_) | Sysadmin WSR       | Verantwortliche sprach:
> | |   | hjp at wsr.ac.at      | Es werde ein Testcase.
> __/   | http://www.hjp.at/ |    -- Clemens Zauner in dcii
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