I don't know if this will do what you want but you could look at MILO. This is a
lilo like bootloader for other architectures. I don't have the URL so a web
search will be required.
Brendan Simon.
Graham Stoney wrote:
> Hi Folks,
>
> I'm currently investigating options for a minimal-cost x386 based diskless
> embedded controller running a stripped-down Linux kernel for a reasonably
> simple embedded TCP/IP application. I'm very interested in opinions or
> experience anyone could offer.
>
> My choice of x386 is to allow easy hardware & software prototyping on desktop
> PC's and off-the-shelf embedded biscuit-PC-like boards. Ultimately, I'd like to
> build a tiny BIOS-less system with traditional (i.e. non-IDE) flash/eprom
> memory and minimal RAM. Since the Linux kernel has a larger footprint than
> traditional embedded OS's, it would be nice to run it directly from ROM with
> a ROM-based root filesystem. I'd prefer not to simply copy the kernel into RAM
> or use an "initrd" RAM-disk for root filesystem stuff which is all essentially
> read-only. Demonstrating that Linux can run embedded with very little RAM is
> one of the goals here, even at the expense of slightly more ROM.
>
> My guess is that much of the specifics here can be handled by a ROM-based
> bootloader which sets up the x386 MMU to effectively "load" the kernel, and
> from then on everything is much like running in a desktop box, albeit a
> severely stripped one. Does anyone know of an existing bootloader that can
> perform this sort of magic, or any other pointers to existing solutions?
>
> Thank you,
> Graham
