Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2000 19:20:52 -0800 (PST) From: Geff Hanoian <boing@boing.com> To: forrestc@iMach.com (Forrest W. Christian) Cc: boing@boing.com, msmith@FreeBSD.ORG, freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: fbsdboot.exe can't load elf kernels Message-ID: <200001120320.TAA12354@kusanagi.boing.com> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.3.96.1000111190059.11092B-100000@workhorse.iMach.com> from "Forrest W. Christian" at "Jan 11, 2000 7:59: 8 pm"
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> On Tue, 11 Jan 2000, Geff Hanoian wrote: > > > I did the research a few months ago. One manufacturer actually wanted > > to sell us a compiler to install a "DOS thing" according the sales person. > > I don't remember the models, etc. I'll look it up at some point. Maybe some > > embedded experts could lend a hand? I'm defintely an embedded beginner. > > Nearly 100% of "modern" Flash Memory devices either emulate an IDE drive > in Hardware or have emulate a standard BIOS disk device using some sort of > BIOS driver, usually in such a way so that it will boot a DOS-like OS from > it. This is what I remember from my research. > Of course, the ones which truly emulate an IDE drive at the hardware level > just work like an IDE drive, although slower on writes. > > The BIOS ones get tricky. Obviously, if the boot loader only uses bios > calls to do it's dirty work, these work well, at least through the boot > process. If the boot loader tries to access the hardware directly, and it > doesn't directly support the flash device, then the boot loader doesn't > work. Of course, this also applies to the OS. And that's assuming you could actually get a UFS partition on the "drive emulator thing"? But if you were only capable of loading files to a fat16, then wouldn't fbsdboot.exe (or whatever it's called) be necessary? Geff To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message
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