[plug] Computer Angels Sale Time

Craig Ringer craig at postnewspapers.com.au
Fri Aug 5 16:28:07 WST 2005


On Fri, 2005-08-05 at 15:32 +0800, Harry McNally wrote:

> Cyrix MediaGX 200MHz CPU,
> 32MB SDRAM in one of two SDRAM slots,
> 16MB DiskonChip running Linux 2.0.something with $some_apps,

Specifically XFree86 3.3 (XF86_SVGA only), Netscape 4, a terminal
emulator, an ICA client, possibly other remote service clients, and
that's about it.

> one ATA disk interface (no HDD installed)

Nobody's been able to boot it off the ATA disk interface yet though. It
works, but doesn't seem to be scanned by the BIOS for a boot record.

I was also unable to use a PXE ROM-equipped NIC to intercept its boot
process.

We can't get into the BIOS to fiddle with the boot order. It's not even
known if there *IS* a BIOS setup program, or if the bios is configured
by fiddling bits of /dev/mem, some custom tool, or something else
entirely.

One possible approach is to drop the DiskOnChip into a wizard, give it a
sensible boot loader and Etherboot, and netboot it into PXES or LTSP. I
intend to try this but have been held back by misbehaving wizards and
lack of time.

--
Craig Ringer




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