Paul Brook wrote:
There is no ARM support though unless you want to do it. I also have an ARM machine, so at least I could try to compile.
In practice almost no ARM machines use OpenFirmware, and ARM kernels have their own bootloader interface, so you're better off using something like u-boot.
Thanks Paul. On the other hand installing something like u-boot assumes that you know quite a lot about the underlying architecture of the board, but if the manufacturer isn't being helpful working out the details can be made vastly easier by having interactive tools.
In the current case I've got some boards http://www.tri-m.com/products/iei/kamio27012702.html which I'm hoping to get into silent Linux servers, they've got CE and eyeballing the bootable media (on Compact Flash) suggests that they are very PC-like... although I've not done significant reverse-engineering yet. The same boards are available with different firmware and with Linux on the CF device for about ?170 which we might possibly consider as a way of getting the binaries, but they want something like ?500 for the Linux toolset and system documentation which they quite simply aren't going to get from us.
So despite the fact that these are ARM I can see control going to a PC-style MBR, then to the boot sector at the start of a FAT filesystem, then to a loader for CE in an understood binary format. Now there's no way I can commit myself to any timescale, but if I were able to massage OpenBIOS into the same binary format then it might be that it would be applicable to other CE devices in addition to these boards which would probably be a Good Thing.
I'm going to start off tinkering on an aging x86. This itself might turn out to be "fun" since I've already found that GRUB does something to the system that screws the kernel- LILO is fine but if possible I'd like to bypass both.