[LinuxBIOS] MACH BOOT

Alan Carvalho de Assis acassis at gmail.com
Sun Oct 7 15:17:01 CEST 2007


Hi Jun,

2007/10/7, Jun OKAJIMA <okajima at digitalinfra.co.jp>:
> I checked the video. It looks great. Good work.
> But, your way limits functionality. You can use only Tiny/X and busybox and...
> If you use Firefox, using CD-ROM is necessary, right?
>

Yes, this is a good approach. You can place the Linux kernel on the
BIOS and rootfs can still on the CDROM. I don't make tests but I think
read from BIOS Flash (LPC = ~16.7 MB/s) is more faster than read from
48X CDROM (48 x 150KB/s = ~ 7MB/s)

> So, combining your way and my way would be a right choice.
>

Yes, once we don't have BIOS flash more than 2MB then this combining
is the right choice.

> And, the problem is not only BIOS, but a firm ware of CD-ROM also.
> In some drives, to recognize a medium and start reading requies more than 10 sec.
> I mean, to start reading uses more time than booting Linux itself.
> To solve this, probably so-called "LinuxFirmware" would be necessary...
>
> I need ATAPI commands like these.
> SET_MEDIA( media_type="CD-R", media_format="SINGLE_SESSION" )
> START_SPIN( speed="MAX", wait=0)
> If you can send these commands in the early stage of BIOS booting,
> it gets more faster to start reading a medium.
>

Hmm, so this is the trick to get Linux booting in 10s :-)
You will get best results using LinuxBIOS.

>         --- Okajima, Jun. Tokyo, Japan.
>             http://www.machboot.com/
>

Cheers,

Alan




More information about the coreboot mailing list