From owner-freebsd-small Fri May 22 16:07:57 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id QAA09676 for freebsd-small-outgoing; Fri, 22 May 1998 16:07:57 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-small@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from dingo.cdrom.com (dingo.cdrom.com [204.216.28.145]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id QAA09670 for ; Fri, 22 May 1998 16:07:50 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from mike@dingo.cdrom.com) Received: from dingo.cdrom.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by dingo.cdrom.com (8.8.8/8.8.5) with ESMTP id OAA02699; Fri, 22 May 1998 14:55:57 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <199805222155.OAA02699@dingo.cdrom.com> X-Mailer: exmh version 2.0zeta 7/24/97 To: randal@comtest.com cc: Andrzej Bialecki , freebsd-small@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Embeded applications? In-reply-to: Your message of "Fri, 22 May 1998 12:21:52 -1000." <199805222203.MAA07511@oldyeller.comtest.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Date: Fri, 22 May 1998 14:55:56 -0700 From: Mike Smith Sender: owner-freebsd-small@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > 1. Software BIOS emulation, INT 13H. Also identified as Flash File System. > This mean that you can only access the flash through BIOS call interrupt 13H. > Using INT 13H you can specify CHS(cylinder,head,sector) values to access the > flash. It does not have any hardware compatibility with IDE I/O ports or > registers. Since DOS commands rely only on BIOS calls to access hard drives, > this type of emulation works with the standard DOS commands FDISK and FORMAT. > FreeBSD kernel cannot see this type of flash since it cannot call BIOS > routines. (this is the type of flash that is built onto the PC/104 CPU board I > am using) Actually, FreeBSD-current probably *can* talk to this sort of flash disk, although there are some missing components (the disk driver, eg.). Someone with a BIOS-only flash disk would be the perfect candidate to complete this support. > I will try using the rawboot, since I do not need FFS. Technically I do not > have access to FFS anyway as explained above, since I am using software BIOS > flash drive. You can use the normal boot1/boot2 bootloaders, as they have enough FFS support internally to read the kernel. > I still need to figure out once I have the kernel and MFS built. How to > transfer that to the flash drive? I need some kind of program that > can transfer an image to the flash drive using BIOS-INT 13H calls. Write the boot image to a floppy, boot DOS on the target system and use diskcopy. > This would be an alternative. Since I can format the flash drive as a > bootable DOS FAT partition. And put the fbsdboot.exe and a bootable kernel > image in it. And then boot DOS and have autoexec.bat execute fbsdboot.exe on > startup. This wastes (lots of) space. > NOTE: FYI, "FFS" acronyms is used in two ways. > In FreeBSD FFS stands for Fast File System. > In the PC/104 industry FFS stands for Flash File System. > It can get confusing at times... :) Yes. Although the Flash File System extends beyond just the BIOS interface. -- \\ Sometimes you're ahead, \\ Mike Smith \\ sometimes you're behind. \\ mike@smith.net.au \\ The race is long, and in the \\ msmith@freebsd.org \\ end it's only with yourself. \\ msmith@cdrom.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-small" in the body of the message