On Wed, 19 Sep 2001, Ronald G Minnich wrote:
>
> I don't recommend doing this. Jake, can you get a DoC?
Yeah, I've been using one up till now, so at least I'm not completely
stuck...
The reason I was trying out a flash part is that I've been working on a
MP3 & video video streaming box that could be built with a relatively
small amount of tinkering (by others who read the instructions...) I
don't think the software will all fit in the 8MB DoC by the time I'm done,
so I am using a CF card + CF to IDE adapter. Because of this, I don't
really need the DoC, and a flash part is also cheaper and easier to
obtain.
Anyway, thanks everyone for the info - I'm pretty sure the problem is an
unconnected A19 pin - as I said, since I'm using a flash programmer I
read back the ROM and compared it to my original binary, and they are
identical, so it's unlikely it's a programming issue.
For a bit of explanation - I'm about 3/4 done with a simple Boot monitor
(which was pretty easy when I could fit a stripped down kernel in the
flash!) - had just replaced /linuxrc in an initrd with a single binary
that did dhcp/bootp, tftp (and working on zmodem), read/write nvram for
simple config params, vga, serial, and telnet console, and mount an ext2
partition and boot the kernel off of it (or use the D/L'ed on in the
ramdisk). I stole some of the more interesting concepts (and some
code) from RedBoot and the iPaq handheld Linux project, etc. Not sure
turning my PC into an embedded device is "devolving" or not, but I guess
I'm comforable working with a "set-top" development environment, so I was
trying to duplicate it... :)
Now I'm thinking it might be interesting to try the following:
1. LinxBIOS boots from ROM
2. LB loads kernel/initrd ("bootmon") on IDE (CF in my case)
3. "bootmon" kernel can load real kernel, also on IDE/CF
And then for a "production" release, LinuxBIOS could just load the "real"
kernel and skip the bootmon (I suppose behavior be selected via the
serial console).
This would simplify all the development and upgrading (even of the boot
monitor) since it's all on a CF card that can be popped into a USB CF
reader to update it. Now I just need to be able to read a file from an
ext2 fs on an IDE disk... I remember people saying Tiara/Grub does this,
so I'll probably start there, but has anyone played around with it (or
done it another way)?
- Jake
