Hi, I'm new to EFIKA and I received my mainboard last week after about 3 weeks of delivery time (I'm in Germany and chose Expedited delivery).

My brother had the idea of putting it into an Aplus Blockbuster Storm Case:



He used a perforated metal plate he got from a hardware store to mount the EFIKA board inside the case, using regular riser bolts to separate them:



We used a standard ATX power supply, a 40 GB 2.5" hard disk mounted right onto the EFIKA board, a self-powered USB hub to connect mouse, keyboard and a 1 GB USB stick. The DVD-ROM drive is connected via a USB-to-IDE adapter and a USB cable connecting to the external USB hub.

Since I'm currently using only Linux (waiting for MorphOS 2.0!! :) ), I used an NVIDIA 5200 FX graphics card.

To install Linux with an NVIDIA (unsupported) card, I did the following:

• Copy the files from the efika.de website onto the USB stick, plugging it into the EFIKA board.
• Connecting the serial port of my PC with the serial port of the EFIKA using a null modem cable, using HyperTerminal on Windows with the appropriate settings (115200,8,N,1).
• After starting the EFIKA, I typed "boot hd0:0 di_efika console=ttyPSC0" to launch the Debian installer. The output of the Linux kernel goes to the serial port if "ttyPSC0" is specified as a console.
• The Debian installer is a bit messy on the serial line, despite HyperTerminal supporting ANSI sequences, but it's still usable (I'm not sure if Ctrl-L to refresh the display works there, but it does in dselect, the command-line package manager).
• As written in BPlan's Readme PDF file, the installer outputs the name of the hard disk drive at the end of the installation, which in my case, was "/dev/sda1".
• At this point, there's neither a kernel, nor the kernel modules on the hard disk. After reboot, I used the command line "boot hd0:0 kernel_efika root=/dev/sda1 console=ttyPSC0 init 1" to boot from the USB stick in maintenance mode. It gave a maintenance prompt on the serial line.
• I logged in and copied the kernel and kernel modules as written in the EFIKA ReadMe PDF file (requires mounting of the USB stick using "mount /dev/sdb1" which mounts to "/media/usb". I copied the kernel to "/boot" and untarred the modules to "/" (creates "/lib" and subfolders).
• I modified some lines of "/etc/inittab" to look like follows:
  Code:
  1:2345:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty1
  2:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 115200 ttyPSC0
  3:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty3
  This makes Linux post a login prompt to the serial line on every boot. (Notice that you cannot directly login as "root" on the serial line because of security considerations, apparently. But you can login as a normal user and then type "su - root" to get a root login)
• After that was done, the kernel was on the hard drive, and I was able to boot using "boot hd:0 boot/kernel_efika root=/dev/sda1 console=ttyPSC0".

To make the NVIDIA card work on Linux, I did the following:

• First, I unpacked the Linux kernel source from the efika.de site into my home folder. In the kernel's main folder (linux-2.6.19-rc6_efika), there's a kernel configuration file named ".config".
• Using VI, I edited the following lines:
  Code:
  # CONFIG_FB_S1D13XXX is not set
  CONFIG_FB_NVIDIA=y
  CONFIG_FB_NVIDIA_I2C=y
  # CONFIG_FB_RIVA is not set
  to enable the NVIDIA frame buffer driver. (NOTE that the I2C driver is required for proper FB operation)
  (you can search for "FB" to find the location)
• To make the kernel, I typed "make" and copied the kernel (zImage.chrp) from the "arch/powerpc/boot" to "/boot" and named it "efika_nv". I installed the modules (which will go to a different modules folder than the default kernel's) using the technique described in the ReadMe PDF (installing modules to "/tmp", tarring them and untarring them in the root folder).
• After that, booting without "console=ttyPSC0" was no problem (using the command "boot hd:0 boot/efika_nv root=/dev/sda1"), and the machine started X Windows. Note that the display becomes garbled the first time X windows is started. Pressing "Ctrl-Alt-Backspace" kills the X server and restarts it. GDM comes up then.
• I configured OpenFirmware to autoboot using "setenv boot-device hd:0", "setenv boot-file boot/efika_nv root=/dev/sda1" and "setenv auto-boot? true" (don't worry, auto-boot leaves you over 5 seconds to press either ESC or RETURN before booting starts)
• Since GNOME is a bit sluggish on the EFIKA's 400 MHz processor, I installed "xfce4" which is easy using the GNOME desktop's package manager.

That's it! :)
(and of course I omitted all the troubles that I had finding the right information in my description, but in total, it took me only about 2 days; I had more trouble on regular PCs with some Linux distros ... ;) )

Here are some images of the box (small format):
http://www.newphoria.de/9099/001sm.jpg
http://www.newphoria.de/9099/002sm.jpg
http://www.newphoria.de/9099/003sm.jpg
http://www.newphoria.de/9099/004sm.jpg
http://www.newphoria.de/9099/005sm.jpg
http://www.newphoria.de/9099/006sm.jpg

large format:
http://www.newphoria.de/9099/001.jpg
http://www.newphoria.de/9099/002.jpg
http://www.newphoria.de/9099/003.jpg
http://www.newphoria.de/9099/004.jpg
http://www.newphoria.de/9099/005.jpg
http://www.newphoria.de/9099/006.jpg

p.s.: to compile the kernel, use "apt-get install gcc" and "apt-get install libc6" to install the compilation environment! :)

p.p.s: the DVD-ROM drive is not connected to the external USB port, but to one of EFIKA's ports, because via the hub didn't work.

Here are the files (you'd still need to install Debian via the serial terminal, however, it would spare you from compiling the kernel):

http://www.newphoria.de/9099/efika_nv - the kernel
http://www.newphoria.de/9099/efika_nv_mods.tgz - the kernel modules
http://www.newphoria.de/9099/kernel-config - the kernel configuration (use as ".config")
http://www.newphoria.de/9099/xorg.conf - the X configuration (as detected by the Debian installer, but modified a bit)

Ah yes, I forgot to mention, that you have to set the "UseFBDev" option in xorg.conf to "False", otherwise, X won't start up!

@em2007 - nice work!

We are having a very difficult time with our new distribution system. We may have to stop what we are doing now and go back to the old R&B pack and ship the boxes mode. Sorry about the delayed shipment.

R&B :)

_________________
http://bbrv.blogspot.com

nice work, but what's the point in using such a big case ? you could fit a pegasos board in it.

oh btw, you'll have to get rid of your nvidia card if you want to use MorphOS 2.0. Nvidia cards are not supported. And you'll have to change your linux settings as well of course.

welcome to the efika world.

@R&B: Thank you so much for shipping it to me this fast! I wouldn't have been surprised had it taken a couple of months. I've been looking for an affordable PPC board for ages! :)

@SoundSquare: The case is not that big (and not too big): we chose it because we plan to put in some extra hardware. I can also reuse the case for a regular PC if I ever decide to get a smaller one for the EFIKA. I chose EFIKA over Pegasos not only because it's much more affordable, but also because it's available now and Pegasos boards aren't currently being manufactured. I do know that MorphOS 2.0 requires an ATI or Voodoo card, and my brother has ordered two low-profile ATI 9250 cards (one AGP and one PCI card) already (I do have a regular-sized ATI 9250 card) that I will receive next week. I'll stash these away for usage with MorphOS 2.0 to have them ready when the OS becomes available. I'll stick with Linux and NVidia in the meantime. :)

EFIKA will also allow me doing some virtual machine, code generator, compiler and OS research. I'm really glad I bought it! :)

sorry i ddn't realize my tone was a bit harsh, i understand what you're doing. Keep posting about your efka experimenting here !

Thank you! :)

Well, the correct thing to use is;
It will drag in ncurses and all the libraries to build a 2.6 series kernel. The other pertinent package for just compiling anything (for a start) is;
Which is pretty much, your native compiler, random includes, debian cruft you generally need to build anything.

To allow root login on the serial console you need to add ttyPSC0 to /etc/securetty - then it'll be just fine.

Sorry it took so long to deliver your Efika but I am glad you are finding it useful :)

_________________
Matt Sealey

just curious have you tried 3d with it?

@mvdhoning: Nope. AFAIK, there's no hardware accelerated 3D driver from NVidia for Linux PPC. The community-written driver that comes with X.org and the framebuffer driver both support only 2D graphics. On Linux x86 it's sometimes possible to use NVidia's 3D accelerated Linux x86 driver.

@Neko: Thanks for the information! Very useful! :)