On Wed, 9 May 2001 16:43:37 +0200 (MET DST), Eugene Leitl wrote:
>On Wed, 9 May 2001, Petter Andersson wrote:
>
>> Does anyone know about the minimum hardware
>> requirements of an embedded linux system?
>> Do I need a BIOS on my board?
>
>Have you checked out LinuxBIOS?
>
LinuxBIOS is way cool but it's still under lots of developement and
only enjoys full support for a small set of chipsets. More are on
the way... but just not there yet. What arch and chipset are you
trying to use?
Weither or not you need a BIOS depends largely on what hardware you
have on your board as iniializing the hardware is the BIOS's primary
responsibiliy. The 2.4.x series of kernels can initialize a bunch of
different devices BUT you have to get the system to a stage that
linux can run.. Primarly this means getting your RAM enabled, getting
into protected mode, copying the kernel to a section of RAM and then
jumping to it.
Currently LinuxBIOS that does all the above and is the only boot
method that dosen't depend on BIOS calls. So if you want to use
LILO, GRUB, loadlin, syslinux, etc.. You need a BIOS because these
programs depend on standard BIOS calls.
--
Richard A. Smith Bitworks, Inc.
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 501.846.5777
Sr. Design Engineer http://www.bitworks.com
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