[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I'm a developer for an embedded computer manufacturer - RadiSys. I'm
> looking for a quick way to get Linux running on our embedded x86 platforms.
> Typically, we engineer the hardware platform to be "pc compatible" and
> throw a BIOS onto the board to complete its PC-ness, however, some of our
> platforms are not PCs even though they use PC chipsets (Intel BX's and.
> Serverworks). In these instances diving into the BIOS source code to
> port to a non-PC is not an effective option - the interdependencies of the
> BIOS source code make this task essentially impossible. So, my question
> is ... is the Linux BIOS well suited for these non-PC platforms?
We are and other developers here are using LinuxBIOS for all types of
embedded designs that aren't pcs that use various x86 cpus along with pc
chipsets.
>
> Conceptually, my expectation is that the Linux BIOS would work fine on the
> non-PC platforms and the level of port effort would be relative to how far
> the design strayed from a PC. I would also expect that devices that could
> not be found during the discovery and configuration phase would just be
> left alone and un-initialized. Finally, since we're done once we get the
> ROM'ed version of Linux running, there's no need to use LOBOS to load
> another OS. Is my thinking correct? Do you foresee any problems with
> making Linux BIOS work for embedded designs as described above?
The major problem we have had is getting accurate BIOS info from silicon
vendors in able to init and config the chipsets properly since they are
used to only dealing with the handful of BIOS vendors in the world.
Bari
