PCMCIA Support

The reason I'm interested in linuxbios is that I'd like to create a
self-contained (not remote booted) no-moving-parts system for
ruggetized use.

I'd be open to a better idea - but so far I'm thinking of putting
an OpenBSD fs on a pcmcia ATA flash card and access it through one of
those PCI<->pcmcia cards. This should make for a neat off-the-shelf
system for firewalls, gateways, etc. Most bios's don't support pcmcia
because most mb's don't have pcmcia hw... Therefore my linuxbios
interest. Has anyone considered putting in PCMCIA support? A grep of
sources and mail archive comes up blank, except for booting off of CF.
CF would work but I suspect I have to buy a special (read expensive) mb
that has CF support.

Am I getting myself into a project? :)

tom.c

[Adam Sulmicki]

CF talks in ATA protocol, so just order simple pass-thru plate ($20)
which will allow you to connect CF to IDE cable and that's it..
On Thu, 1 May 2003 [e-mail] wrote:
> The reason I'm interested in linuxbios is that I'd like to create a
>
> self-contained (not remote booted) no-moving-parts system for
> ruggetized use.
> I'd be open to a better idea - but so far I'm thinking of putting
>
> an OpenBSD fs on a pcmcia ATA flash card and access it through one of
> those PCI<->pcmcia cards. This should make for a neat off-the-shelf
> system for firewalls, gateways, etc. Most bios's don't support pcmcia
> because most mb's don't have pcmcia hw... Therefore my linuxbios
> interest. Has anyone considered putting in PCMCIA support? A grep of
> sources and mail archive comes up blank, except for booting off of CF.
> CF would work but I suspect I have to buy a special (read expensive) mb
> that has CF support.
> Am I getting myself into a project? :)
>
> tom.c
>
> Linuxbios mailing list
> [e-mail]
> http://www.clustermatic.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxbios

[Adam Agnew]

No plans that I know of to add PCMCIA support. And if I may make a
recommendation, why not get a compact flash on ide adapter? Our friends
at cwlinux.com still sell such a beast i believe. And plenty of us on the
list use this solution.
- Adam Agnew

On Thu, 1 May 2003 [e-mail] wrote:
> The reason I'm interested in linuxbios is that I'd like to create a
>
> self-contained (not remote booted) no-moving-parts system for
> ruggetized use.
> I'd be open to a better idea - but so far I'm thinking of putting
>
> an OpenBSD fs on a pcmcia ATA flash card and access it through one of
> those PCI<->pcmcia cards. This should make for a neat off-the-shelf
> system for firewalls, gateways, etc. Most bios's don't support pcmcia
> because most mb's don't have pcmcia hw... Therefore my linuxbios
> interest. Has anyone considered putting in PCMCIA support? A grep of
> sources and mail archive comes up blank, except for booting off of CF.
> CF would work but I suspect I have to buy a special (read expensive) mb
> that has CF support.
> Am I getting myself into a project? :)
>
> tom.c
>
> Linuxbios mailing list
> [e-mail]
> http://www.clustermatic.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxbios

[Adam Sulmicki]

on technical note, it *is* possible to do this way. just use:

linuxbios+linux kernel (built in pcmcia support)+kexec

in this way you can use linux kernel to boot off whatever linux supports.

of course your initial boot medium must be big enough to support
linuxbios+linux kernel+kexec.

... but as I (and the other Adam) said before CF is *is* an ATA device..
so just get CF<=>ATA adapter and connect it to it. that's it..

On Thu, 1 May 2003, Adam Agnew wrote:
> No plans that I know of to add PCMCIA support. And if I may make a
> recommendation, why not get a compact flash on ide adapter? Our friends
> at cwlinux.com still sell such a beast i believe. And plenty of us on the
> list use this solution.
> Adam Agnew
>
> On Thu, 1 May 2003 [e-mail] wrote:
> > The reason I'm interested in linuxbios is that I'd like to create a
> >
> > self-contained (not remote booted) no-moving-parts system for
> > ruggetized use.
> > I'd be open to a better idea - but so far I'm thinking of putting
> >
> > an OpenBSD fs on a pcmcia ATA flash card and access it through one of
> > those PCI<->pcmcia cards. This should make for a neat off-the-shelf
> > system for firewalls, gateways, etc. Most bios's don't support pcmcia
> > because most mb's don't have pcmcia hw... Therefore my linuxbios
> > interest. Has anyone considered putting in PCMCIA support? A grep of
> > sources and mail archive comes up blank, except for booting off of CF.
> > CF would work but I suspect I have to buy a special (read expensive) mb
> > that has CF support.
> > Am I getting myself into a project? :)
> >
> > tom.c
> >
> > Linuxbios mailing list
> > [e-mail]
> > http://www.clustermatic.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxbios
>
> Linuxbios mailing list
> [e-mail]
> http://www.clustermatic.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxbios

[ron minnich]

On Thu, 1 May 2003, Adam Sulmicki wrote:
> on technical note, it *is* possible to do this way. just use:
>
> linuxbios+linux kernel (built in pcmcia support)+kexec
>
> in this way you can use linux kernel to boot off whatever linux supports.

and we've done this too. Works fine with a 1MB flash part. We also had a 
104-node Alpha cluster that worked this way.

ron

[ron minnich]

On Thu, 1 May 2003 [e-mail] wrote:
> The reason I'm interested in linuxbios is that I'd like to create a
>
> self-contained (not remote booted) no-moving-parts system for
> ruggetized use.

This has been done in several cases. Some embedded systems boot linux out 
of flash and that's the system they run.  If you have 1 MB of flash that's 
plenty of room for a 2.4 kernel and initrd.

ron