[openfirmware] Making Open Firmware look like CE

[Mark Morgan Lloyd]

A few weeks ago (mid March) I mentioned that I had some ARM boards that 
I'd like use as Linux development systems. Unfortunately, they come with 
CE, and while the manufacturer does supply Linux it's prohibitively 
expensive.

CE is booted from a partitioned CompactFlash card, and I initially 
thought that the code in the partition and filesystem boot sectors was 
relevant, i.e. that there was something equivalent to a PC's BIOS in 
Flash. However on inspection I think that the code is x86, which implies 
that the loader in Flash is reading and transferring control to the OS 
image directly.

Is it possible to build Open Firmware to look like a CE image, which 
would possibly allow this board (and potentially many other devices) to 
run Linux without modification to the content of internal Flash?

-- 
Mark Morgan Lloyd
markMLl .AT. telemetry.co .DOT. uk

[Opinions above are the author's, not those of his employers or colleagues]