[LinuxBIOS] crashfree , virtual dual BIOS - PCI expansion ROM

[Quux]

my favourite has always been Elitegroup "top hat flash" - a bios saviour
lookalike w/o the switch.

Does it make sense to put Linux BIOS on a Ethernet NIC to avoid that
soldering stuff ? take out the card and fall back to standard BIOS ? max
128 KByte possible.

greetinx ! Q

[Stefan Reinauer]

* Quux  [070307 13:45]:
> my favourite has always been Elitegroup "top hat flash" - a bios saviour
> lookalike w/o the switch.

Did they use software switching?
> Does it make sense to put Linux BIOS on a Ethernet NIC to avoid that
> soldering stuff ? take out the card and fall back to standard BIOS ? max
> 128 KByte possible.

That won't work since the standard bios does not support it.

Stefan

[Quux]

Stefan Reinauer schrieb:
> Quux  [070307 13:45]:
> > my favourite has always been Elitegroup "top hat flash" - a bios saviour
> > lookalike w/o the switch.
>
> Did they use software switching?

no : putting on the top hat (a second socket with second chip) 
"switches" to secondary.
lifting it off manually ("hot unplug") falls back. cheap but effective.
> > Does it make sense to put Linux BIOS on a Ethernet NIC to avoid that
> > soldering stuff ? take out the card and fall back to standard BIOS ? max
> > 128 KByte possible.
>
> That won't work since the standard bios does not support it.

expansion ROM is called very early. I thought the expansion could be 
programmed to not return into main BIOS.
then the main BIOS does not do much except call the linuxBIOS ?   --Q

[ron minnich]

expansion rom is not called early enough to make a meaningful test of
linuxbios.

thanks

ron