are there problems with this email? - what is a disc on chip? - beginner's question

[Alessio Sangalli]

Antony Stone wrote:

> In the UK they cost about GBP20 - so I guess that's about EUR30 / USD30 in
> the rest of the world...

Is there a web-seller or something?


> 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?

And how many mbits are those disc-on-chip?

> >I can think those chips provide particular features, but
> >which ones exactly?
>
>
> The main thing which DoC does which you can't do with standard Flash 
> Roms is
> to format them as a Silicon Disc, and put a file system into them.

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?


> >Aren't common flash/eeprom chips much easier to find
> >and cheaper to buy?
>
>
> Yes, but they're too small.

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


> You can program a Flash Rom chip on your motherboard - no external 
> programmer
> needed - that's how you upgrade the BIOS even if you're not doing anything
> with LinuxBIOS.


yes, I know; however I thought that burning several megabits non 
standard flash chips could have required an external device or 
something. But it was only a supposition.


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...

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?


bye, thank you
as