On Wed, 23 Jul 2003, Steve Gehlbach wrote:
I suggested this last year, with the comment that this is a more traditional way that embedded systems start up. Your objections at the time were that it would cause trouble with some motherboards, but I don't remember the specifics. I was wanting to do this since it is clear that we will be getting 2 Mbyte LPC soon and be able to boot Linux easily out of flash (as I think you have already done).
you have an inconvenient memory: you were right and I was wrong :-)
One caveat I discovered, I could never get Linux to boot with a gdt located higher than 1M. So even if you put a linux compatible gdt high, it has to be moved to ram < 1M or linux hangs on boot. Never figured out why (true for 2.4 anyway).
we're not seeing this. We have GDTs in very high memory and it all works. Interesting.
Also, on the dynamic/static trees, one thing to consider in the mix is the serial ATA. I think it is an external chip now but will be subsumed into the bridge chips at some point. Not sure how a chip function moving around like this affects the software design.
I think it might work. On the Acer, the IDE controller has always been in that static initialization. In fact, the superio architecture was motivated by the acer chip.
ron