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Re: Booting oskit from linear flash



>On Mon, 1 Feb 1999, Ramon van Handel wrote:
>
>> >If you don't have a bios to help, then you can use linear flash memory and
>> >send the initial chip select to the flash device.  However, one would have
>> >to write some custom software to configure the system before loading a
>> >boot sector loader like lilo.
>>
>> Hey... the things is diskless... why would he want to load a bootsector ?
>>
>Since there are existing Linux drivers that make flash look like a device
>you can treat it like a file system.  Also, flash is slow and it's
>preferable to execute code from DRAM which is much faster.

Hmmm, in that case it seems *lots* easier to me to simply relocate the
whole business into DRAM and run it from there.  Should be no problem, if
you ask me.  It seems to me that flash FS-emulator drivers and the like are
just plain overkill.

>Also, you may
>want your kernal image and application code to be compressed on flash.

Okay, you'd have to write some decompression code for the bootloader.
Still, I don't see the neccessity to start doing weird things...

Ramon


---
Ramon van Handel   <vhandel@chem.vu.nl>
Chemistry Student, OS Programmer and all-round Weirdo
The ant has made himself illustrious / Through constant industry industrious.
So what? Would you be calm and placid / If you were full of formic acid?
(Ogden Nash)


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