Hi Robin, there's another complication with the kernel+initrd+rdev approach: IDE != FDD.. So I doubt whether the comBIOS will load the kernel without a partition table in sector 0. In fact, I've seen [IBM] harddrives ceasing to be recognized as such after zeroing out the boot sector.
Still, how hard would it be to install a Debian onto a second disk? As I understood from your previous messages, the Debian Installer offers brltty support. Or boot from some live CD. But to take the problem back to its origin: your claim was that a _Windows_ (let's keep that clear!) TFTP boot doesn't work for a net5501 with comBIOS V1.33c. And that you don't want to downgrade to 1.33b, which did work, because there is some claim out there about a comBIOS upgrade possibly resulting in hardware damage. All that the Soekris download page states on this issue is that "Please note: It is not recommended to "downgrade" a BIOS to an older version than the one a board is supplied with." So my burning question to this list is: in what way could downgrading the comBIOS to the lowest version supported by a particular board type do any damage to the hardware or otherwise? Because I don't see it. Back with Debian again: in addition to the other image types proposed: maybe a Debian "businesscard" install image is just what you were looking for: http://www.debian.org/CD/netinst/ Bill On Sat, 2008-11-22 at 00:50 +0100, Robin Kipp wrote: > Hi Bill, > that's an interesting idea, hehe... :-) The only problem is this also > requires a running Linux I could use to copy the kernel onto the CF card > which I don't have :-( > Robin > > -- Debian Package Management System: The Horror. _______________________________________________ Soekris-tech mailing list Soekris-tech@lists.soekris.com http://lists.soekris.com/mailman/listinfo/soekris-tech
