From owner-freebsd-stable  Tue Jan 11 19:21: 0 2000
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From: Geff Hanoian <boing@boing.com>
Message-Id: <200001120320.TAA12354@kusanagi.boing.com>
Subject: Re: fbsdboot.exe can't load elf kernels
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"
To: forrestc@iMach.com (Forrest W. Christian)
Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2000 19:20:52 -0800 (PST)
Cc: boing@boing.com, msmith@FreeBSD.ORG, freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG
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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


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