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    SubjectRe: Linux on 386 EX SBC Card
    Date
    > I'm about to buy a 386 EX SBC Card from universal developers
    > (www.universal-developers.com).
    > This card has a Intel 386EX with 2Mbytes DRAM, 2 serial ports,
    > 1 paralele port, 1 interupts controler, 1 timer, 1 Watchdog timer
    > 1Mbytes flash PROM with BIOS and DOS in it.
    >
    > Do you think I could run linux on it ?

    It would appear so

    > Do I need the BIOS, or can Linux do all initialisation alone ?
    > Is there a driver to access ROM as a block device ? If not can I use
    > /dev/rom device MAJOR defined in devices.txt for my driver?

    There are some obvious devices to modify to run as /dev/rom, and some
    equivalent to ROM ram disks around. You can use what majors you like internally
    too.

    As to the BIOS. Linux needs to be loaded and to be passed a block of boot
    time information giving things like the presence of APM, the ram size etc.
    So at minimum you need a loader to initialise the hardware dump the kernel
    into RAM set up the tables and run it. In theory you can run the kernel image
    from ROM although 2.0.x might need a couple of small changes where it writes
    to its constant strings.

    The best starting point is to read arch/i386/kernel/head.S and see if you can
    replace the calls it makes to the bios with your own hard coded (or otherwise)
    data.

    Mail me if you get stuck

    Alan


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