Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2000 22:11:17 -0800 (PST) From: "Rodney W. Grimes" <freebsd@gndrsh.dnsmgr.net> To: forrestc@iMach.com (Forrest W. Christian) Cc: msmith@FreeBSD.ORG (Mike Smith), boing@boing.com (Geff Hanoian), freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: fbsdboot.exe can't load elf kernels Message-ID: <200001120611.WAA26942@gndrsh.dnsmgr.net> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.3.96.1000111221529.11092D-100000@workhorse.iMach.com> from "Forrest W. Christian" at "Jan 11, 2000 10:41:45 pm"
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...
>
> 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
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