[NTLUG:Discuss] linux and diskonchip

[Bug Hunter]

On Mon, 24 Feb 2003, Rob Apodaca wrote:

> Hi all,
<snip>
 > Now here is what I want to ask the group. I came across m-sys' 
 diskonchip http://www.m-sys.com/ which looks very interesting indeed - no 
 moving parts. First, does anyone have any experience with this product. 
 Does it work as advertised? Any failures? Second, does anyone know of a 
 supplier - either in the DFW area or on the 'net. The website has a list 
 of local sales reps and I will be contacting the one listed for DFW but I 
was just curious to know if there were any others.
> 
> Thanks for any input,
> -rob

  The standard disk-on-chip from m-sys uses a bios extender to extend (if 
I remember right) int 13 in bios to let you boot from it.

  Worked pretty well on earlier linuxes when you patched lilo so it would 
not use the same memory that  lilo used to to the boot with.

  With the current version of linux, I've been unable to get a boot from 
the msys disk on chip, due to the kernel wanting more low memory than is 
available when msys bios extension and the single board computer bios were 
both in memory.

  I got around it by using the dos linux loader loadlin routine,  but it 
was a pain.

  a much better idea is to search for compact-flash to ide adaptors (using 
google) and then plug a 64 meg ($28) compact flash, or a 512 meg ($300) 
compact flash into the adaptor, then into the ide cable, and do an 
install.

  The only problem is you then have to tell LILO NOT to use dma for 
/dev/hda, as compact flash devices don't support dma, and the kernel can't 
always figure that out at boot time.

  Note that you get about 100,000 writes to each location in flash, so be 
sure to mount /tmp to tempfs (which is a ram only device), and generally 
available in the 2.4 and above kernels from the major distributions (red 
hat, mandrake)


bug

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