Re: [ECOS] Redboot on CF for x86 based target

[Iztok Zupet <iz at vsr dot si>]

On Wednesday 11 of February 2004 15:25, Nick Garnett wrote:
> Narendra Hadke <narenh@intotoinc.com> writes:
> > Hi,
> >      I am planning to put  Redboot on a Compact Flash(CF) for an x86
> >   compatible target.  As per Redboot User Guide, only floppy is
> >   supported for Redboot for x86 based PC. Is it still true ?
> >      If support is not there, what  needs to be done to add this
> >   support?
>
> You could adapt the redboot floppy bootstrap code to work with a hard
> disk device. However, since hard disks have varying dimensions, this
> info needs to be fetched from the bootblock, which is not catered for
> in the eCos bootstrap mechanism. Booting RedBoot from a CF would also
> render the CF card unusable for other purposes.
>
> However, take a look at the GRUB support. This is intended to support
> the direct loading of eCos applications and does not support the
> booting of RedBoot at present, since using a bootloader to load a
> bootloader seemed silly. Take a look at:
>
> http://ecos.sourceware.org/docs-latest/user-guide/setup-i386-pc.html
>
> for details.

Hello

Last Year I did myself a DiskOnChip patch, which also has an option of booting 
from generic PC disk and CF (someone alredy used it to boot from CF).

The patch may be outdated now (because of Nick's GRUB startup option), but it 
might be useful because it uses a BIOS call to figure out the disk geometry.

If You're willing to try take a look at 
<http://www.vsr.si/ecos/patches/redbootdoc.html>.

Regards
Iztok

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