SV: Y2k
This is only in America, the land of the free and the stupid. Poor America! I'm glad I live in Norway, Europe. -- Thor`n
Re: ELKS 0.0.81 available from ftp.ecs.soton.ac.uk
Hi David. All you have to do is to insure your ROM image uses correct format (utils in netboot package create correct images from executable binaries) and BIOS will do the rest of the job Actually, 'format' simply means 0x55aa at the start of the image, and the 3rd byte contains the number of 256 byte pages in the ROM. Nothing else is involved in the 'format'. There is a little more than that involved: 1. When checksummed over the length of the ROM, the checksum must be correct. 2. There were TWO entry points to each ROM that had to be in the correct place. One was the initialisation entry point, the second was the "DOS Extended Commands" table, which consisted of a table of additional DOS commands together with the offset of the command within the ROM. Miss those out and you can expect your ROM to cause problems... it will detect the ROM fetch its size and start address and start executing code from it. It is up to you (ROM) to return control to BIOS (and let it boot normaly) or execute kernel and boot into your OS (that's the way you want it if you implant a ROM in there). I'd suggest that you don't do it this way, and that you actually hook interrupt 0x19. This allows BIOS to detect various hardware, and call any other important ROMs, such as video and disk controller. While you (in theory) can boot directly from the ROM, ELKS won't like you much. Apart from anything else, quite a few drivers, notably the disk and console drivers generally use BIOS calls. Very true, and I will definately second this recommendation. Best wishes from Riley. * Copyright (C) 1999, Memory Alpha Systems. * All rights and wrongs reserved. +--+ | There is something frustrating about the quality and speed of Linux | | development, ie., the quality is too high and the speed is too high, | | in other words, I can implement this feature, but I bet someone | | else has already done so and is just about to release their patch. | +--+ * http://www.memalpha.cx/Linux/Kernel/
Re: KISS networking for elks
Hi David. Aren't some people working on network drivers? Are they at the stage where we can transmit and receive ethernet frames yet? I'm not sure, but the sooner it's working, the better IMHO. One good use I can see for networked ELKS is as a print server for the network. Basically, all that requires of the operating system is: 1. Support for a single network connection. It matters little whether this is ethernet, token ring, SLIP, PPP or PLIP. 2. Support for a single printer connection. It matters little whether this is a serial or parallel printer. 3. Plenty of space for spooling documents to be printed - the more the merrier as far as this application is concerned. 4. A userland print spooler daemon that receives documents in a ready to print format and sends them to the printer. Note that the following additional facilities would all be useful, but NONE of them are required: 5. A userland print spooler daemon that receives documents in Postscript and converts them to the format required by the attached printer. 6. The ability to connect two or more printers to the same print spooler. 7. The ability to handle two or more network connections. Before anybody asks, I was working on the print spooler daemon, but lost my work when my hard disk failed. Right at the moment, I'm in no position to do anything on it, but when I can, I will try to do something along those lines. Best wishes from Riley. * Copyright (C) 1999, Memory Alpha Systems. * All rights and wrongs reserved. +--+ | There is something frustrating about the quality and speed of Linux | | development, ie., the quality is too high and the speed is too high, | | in other words, I can implement this feature, but I bet someone | | else has already done so and is just about to release their patch. | +--+ * http://www.memalpha.cx/Linux/Kernel/
Re: ELKS Networking
On Tue, 23 Nov 1999, Riley Williams wrote: Hi Ed. I am a programmer and would like to help out I can. I have a 4 computer ethernet local area network at home I would be happy to test out any network drivers you come up with. I would also be willing to help on the coding if needed. The obvious question is what network adapters do you use? 3Com Etherlink and Etherlink II (3c501 and 3c503). I guess I have some Arcnet cards toothough I don't see arcnet in Elks' near future :) Dan
