From owner-freebsd-hackers Fri Oct 31 22:14:38 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) id WAA03346 for hackers-outgoing; Fri, 31 Oct 1997 22:14:38 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-hackers) Received: from srv.net (snake.srv.net [199.104.81.3]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id WAA03329; Fri, 31 Oct 1997 22:14:31 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from cmott@srv.net) Received: from darkstar.home (ras591.srv.net [205.180.127.91]) by srv.net (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id XAA18780; Fri, 31 Oct 1997 23:14:24 -0700 (MST) Date: Fri, 31 Oct 1997 23:13:51 -0700 (MST) From: Charles Mott X-Sender: cmott@darkstar.home To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org, freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org Subject: Booting off PCMCIA Flash EEProm Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk What is the possibility of getting a PC (either a laptop or conventional chassis) to boot off of a PCMCIA card? The first problem that is apparent is that the rom bios looks to a conventional hard drive or floppy for the boot record. How feasible is it to hack a bios, or are there new bios implementations which will boot off of an flash ATA virtual hard drive? This business of getting PCs away from moving media mechanical drives for embedded applications seems increasingly important. Charles Mott