I searched and couldn't find anything like this in the archives, apologies if this has already been discussed or is far off-topic.
Many notebook computers can't boot from PCI-express expansion cards (example ExpressCard SATA controllers) for the simple reason that, although the card contains an extension BIOS with boot support, the main BIOS didn't invoke it. Would it be possible for a bootloader on an internal (recognized by main BIOS) disk to call these missed extension ROMs so that the attached disk becomes available for boot? The only thing hurdle I'm aware of, (as an experienced programmer of microcontrollers and user-mode x86, but never x86 boot/kernel code) would be if the main BIOS has not performed Plug-n-Play configuration of these cards so the BIOS isn't even mapped into memory yet. I'm pretty sure that PCI and PCI-express cards would have been configured, and PCMCIA cards wouldn't, and I don't know whether ExpressCard would be waiting for some form of card services. Does this sound like something that can/should be solved in the bootloader? _______________________________________________ Grub-devel mailing list Grub-devel@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/grub-devel