Messages in this thread | | | Date | Tue, 20 Apr 1999 10:54:10 +0200 | From | De Schrijver Peter <> | Subject | Re: Flash linux into PC bios? |
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On Mon, Apr 19, 1999 at 01:55:19AM -0000, thospel@mail.dma.be wrote: > > In article <Pine.LNX.4.04.9904172013390.649-100000@berserk.demon.co.uk>, > Peter Horton <pdh@colonel-panic.com> writes: > > On Sat, 17 Apr 1999, Paul Jakma wrote: > > > >> theoretical question: > >> > >> what would happen if i flashed a linux kernel into the BIOS of a > >> recent pc motherboard, given that the EEPROM is big enough to hold > >> the kernel. > >> > >> would it work. the kernel already can initialise most motherboard > >> chipsets, eg PIIX, VP3, so how much stuff does the bios do that the > >> kernel can't? is there any really low level stuff that needs to be > >> tweaked, eg memory timings, that linux couldn't do? > > As a data-point, I once screwed up the bios on an ASUS P2H4 motherboard, > and tried to boot linux when all the system could still do was starting a > boot floppy. >
But the fact it could boot a floppy means that memory, PCI bus, CPLDs etc... were initialized. All this initialization is done by the BIOS. So there was still a small piece of BIOS code left, probably in the write protected region of the FlashPROM.
> The boot worked succesfully until it had to really read something from the > IDE-harddisk. At that point it failed completely. I did some extra experiments > with forced geometries in lilo, but to no avail. >
Maybe the IDE interface was not initialized by the BIOS ?
Peter.
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