Re: Flash linux into PC bios?
De Schrijver Peter (schrijvp@rc.bel.alcatel.be)
Tue, 20 Apr 1999 10:54:10 +0200
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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