On Wednesday 08 January 2003 10:46 pm, Alessio Sangalli wrote:
Antony Stone wrote:
Because they do not have a large enough capacity. Standard BIOS chips are 2megabits (= 32 kilobytes), which is not neough to hold a Linux kernel.
256KB perhaps?
Sorry - yes, 256kbytes is correct.
And how many mbits are those disc-on-chip?
The ones most people use (MD-2800-D08) are 8 megabytes.
So even if I have a flash big enough to store a complete kernel, I won't be able to use it with linuxbios? Only for diskless boxes perhaps? What if I do have an hard disk in the system?
If you have a flash chip big enough fro a kernel I don't think it'll fit into the normal 32 pin socket used by 2 mbit BIOS chips.
However, if you can get a kernel into a chip, then you can certainly have your root fs on a hard drive or across a network.
I'm surprised, I though it was easy to find few megaBYTES flash chips nowadays. Isn't it possible to use my 8MB compact-flash card? ehhehe
Yes, it is. You can get IDE to compact flash adapters, and this will let you boot your machine from CF without needing LinuxBIOS.
However, I must say the price of a DoC is quite high... very comparable to the cost of a pcchips motherboard, which I can find for as low as 45EUR... 30 (plus shipping!) for the DoC is much...
Please tell me where to get a PC-Chips motherboard for 45 Euro. I like the sound of this.
There is no other possible solution about this? I will have an IDE hard disk in the system... perhaps it's possible to have a working LB without a DoC?
You can get LinuxBIOS + etherboot into a 2 Mbit Flash chip if you can boot a kernel across the network.
Regards,
Antony.