LinuxBIOS + FILO boots RedHat 9 CD-ROM - coreboot

11 Oct 2003


      I'm adding ATAPI CD-ROM driver and ISO-9660 filesystem to FILO.
So far, RedHat 9 installation CD-ROM boots with FILO commandline like:
    boot: hdc:/isolinux/vmlinuz initrd=hdc:/isolinux/initrd.img
(hdc is my CD-ROM drive).
It sometimes fails to detect my USB mouse, but the fullscreen
graphical installer is working beautifully on my EPIA 5000. :)
(I'm using VGABIOS.  I didn't try a PS/2 mouse since it is reported
to not work on EPIA).
Before RedHat I tried KNOPPIX 3.3. It uses El Torito floppy emulation
and I already added the code to mount the El Torito floppy image.
It boots, but hangs during the device detection phase I think.
Perhaps it expects the video is already switched to graphical
mode by the realmode part of Linux, which we don't execute.
I have already downloaded SuSE and Debian iso images, but I ran out of
my coasters.
Anyway, guys, this is fun. :)
I'll release FILO 0.4 when some cleanup work is done.
Current CD driver is hackish and has an issue with media detection.
-- 
Takeshi