Alrighty, let me throw one more option into the mix; Because the ASUS motherboards I was using were made up of smelly VIA chipsets, there was too much code needed to get RAM on to fit it into the DoC IPL space (512bytes). So I had a couple of grease-monkeys come and visit me, and they told me that they thought they could make a generic paging device that would fit into the 32pin space that would give me Megabytes of space, with my own little address pager (multiplexer) ... They went on to say that they could probably make it generic .. some sort of adapter that would plug into something like compact flash, so that I could use it in whatever fashion I wanted.
The dream ends here, because the timing was bad .. we didn't have the $$ to go playing around in the BIOS space ... so it was never invented. I believe its still an option, because there are people on this list who are creating embeded applications that could be in a position to have such componentry made, and make auxilliary $$ by selling DoC-like components to other embeders ... ----- Original Message ----- >From: "Elias Rajczyk" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >To: "'Nick Jarmany'" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Subject: RE: Questions >Date: Mon, 11 Feb 2002 13:53:42 +0200 > > > Doesn't that make three components to take care of : the flash chip for > booting, the CF for the Linux kernel and the IDE device (say) for doing > whatever you want to do. If such it sounds like increased headache. But , > say, if you took the pain to develop the relevant drivers, wouldn't it be > more effective to get them right into core LinuxBIOS, keeping size > boundaries in mind, of course. > > Elias. > > -----Original Message----- > From: Nick Jarmany [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Sent: Monday, February 11, 2002 1:03 PM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: RE: Questions > > Question - why is everyone so hung up on getting everything inside the > actual "BIOS" chip? > > This clearly creates problems, especially when using motherboards based on > "standard" PC requirements. > > A simple PC BIOS Flash chip is now very cheap. Why not settle for a target > of:- > > 1) Replacing BIOS with a LinuxBIOS in the smallest space possible, ie > cheapest common flash chip. > 2) Using Compact Flash (CF), or other similar technologies, placed on the > IDE bus that mimics a standard disk drive. > > As I understand it 1) is pretty much done. 2) May have been done but believe > there is probably more support needed for trimming standard kernel + > necessary driver/support modules to fit into smallest/cheapest CF devices. > > Am I alone in this? > > Regards, > > Nick Jarmany > > -----Original Message----- > From: Ian [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Sent: 08 February 2002 02:15 > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Re: Questions > > > > The nice thing is that right now this is our big problem. You have to > climb > > an awfully long ways up hill to get this far. > > > > And this is only a problem on machines designed for general purpose > > uses. Embedded systems have larger ROM chips so can do more. > > Yes, you guys have done an awesome job ... and is a privelege to be able > to argue about something as cool as this :-) [seriously!] > > > > I really want to find out what the rom situation is with AMD760 MPX > > chipset. If I read it right this is the first non-intel system with > > LPC only support. Which makes large roms much more practical. But > > I still might be reading the situation wrong. > What's LPC? A replacement for DIP32? Actually, I was dumb-struck when > I discovered that my new ASUS board has no ISA slots :-( All PCI ... > > >
