From owner-freebsd-hackers Thu May 14 02:42:49 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id CAA19850 for freebsd-hackers-outgoing; Thu, 14 May 1998 02:42:49 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from korin.warman.org.pl (korin.nask.waw.pl [148.81.160.10]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id CAA19837 for ; Thu, 14 May 1998 02:42:35 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from abial@nask.pl) Received: from localhost (abial@localhost) by korin.warman.org.pl (8.8.8/8.8.5) with SMTP id LAA21707; Thu, 14 May 1998 11:45:34 +0200 (CEST) X-Authentication-Warning: korin.warman.org.pl: abial owned process doing -bs Date: Thu, 14 May 1998 11:45:33 +0200 (CEST) From: Andrzej Bialecki X-Sender: abial@korin.warman.org.pl To: sbabkin@dcn.att.com cc: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG, al@cn.ua Subject: RE: Q. Work on boot code for Intel Flash 2 PCMCIA card? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Wed, 13 May 1998 sbabkin@dcn.att.com wrote: > > I'm going to make FreeBSD booting from PCMCIA Flash card. Goal is > > FreeBSD-based diskless router with > > serial console and a lot of various network interfaces. Heh! :-) This is the subject of the week... Just few hours ago I received mail from two (independently working) guys who try to do the same, and one of them even succeeded! :-)) (I'll put more info on www.freebsd.org/~abial). I already asked Jonathan Bresler for creating mailing list for this type of discussion. It'll be called freebsd-small, and will cover the issues of small, unusual FreeBSD installations (such as picobsd and embedded applications). You're welcome to join it as soon as it springs into existence.... > > I guess it's much easier to get PCMCIA interface+ flash card and make > > router more powerfull that CISCO or BAY :-) Hmm... This would need some serious work (configuration management, improved routing code, special memory management constraints etc..) but I'd say it's tempting enough... :-) I even collected some interesting pointers, just in case... > I think the best solution would be to make an ISA card (yes, ISA, > not PCI because there are many other good things to insert into > PCI slots while ISA slots are commonly unused) that makes interface > to a flash card through a 8K (or some other small) window, exposing > the first 8K of flash memory at boot up. It must be mapped into ISA > hole. This will allow to put the bootstrap code into this area of the > flash memory, that will be automatically called by any BIOS during > boot-up. This bootstrap can then do anything from immediate boot > to simulating a floppy drive. May be a good idea would be to have > two independently mapped 8K or 4K sized windows for convenience of > the bootstrap code. Have you done any testing with something similar, or written some code...? Andrzej Bialecki --------------------+--------------------------------------------------------- abial@nask.pl | if(halt_per_mth > 0) { fetch("http://www.freebsd.org") } Research & Academic | "Be open-minded, but don't let your brains to fall out." Network in Poland | All of the above (and more) is just my personal opinion. --------------------+--------------------------------------------------------- To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message