From owner-freebsd-stable Tue Jan 11 22:11:35 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from gndrsh.dnsmgr.net (GndRsh.dnsmgr.net [198.145.92.4]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9AD9215507; Tue, 11 Jan 2000 22:11:31 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from freebsd@gndrsh.dnsmgr.net) Received: (from freebsd@localhost) by gndrsh.dnsmgr.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) id WAA26942; Tue, 11 Jan 2000 22:11:17 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from freebsd) From: "Rodney W. Grimes" Message-Id: <200001120611.WAA26942@gndrsh.dnsmgr.net> Subject: Re: fbsdboot.exe can't load elf kernels In-Reply-To: from "Forrest W. Christian" at "Jan 11, 2000 10:41:45 pm" To: forrestc@iMach.com (Forrest W. Christian) Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2000 22:11:17 -0800 (PST) Cc: msmith@FreeBSD.ORG (Mike Smith), boing@boing.com (Geff Hanoian), freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL54 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG ... > > However, in the "truly" embedded world, you generally do not want a > multiple-stage boot process. In fact, I have spent a fair bit of time > eradicating (sp?) most of the "unneccesary" multi-stage boot from the > PicoBSD stuff I'm doing for a product of mine. The idea of actually > putting a DOS "partition" on the system seems crazy. I've been thinking of reverse engineering or obtaining through other means the Award ``BIOS boot block'' code that resides in a certain motherboard so that I can simply FLASH the FreeBSD kernel into the 2MB FLASH roms for an embedded project. One of the forseen problems with doing this is that the BIOS boot block code usually does the absolute minimum as far as chipset configuration goes and given the complexity of modern chipsets this leaves a big gapping hole. I have on other occasions modified AWARD bios's to add things like the netboot code for a specific NIC card that doesn't have a EEPROM socket on it. I justed grab the space normally used by the SMDS/Symbios BIOS and splatted the code right in. Worked like a champ :-) Hummmm... I can easily cram boot0, boot1 and boot2 in there, but loader is a bit to big at 128K bytes :-(. ... > - Forrest W. Christian (forrestc@imach.com) KD7EHZ ^^^^^^ Hey... a ham from my own region newer than me, and a FreeBSD'er :-) 73, -- Rod Grimes - KD7CAX @ CN85sl - (RWG25) rgrimes@gndrsh.dnsmgr.net To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message