Quick question on using a 128MB compact flash device as an EIDE slave.
BIOS detects it (says it’s a SONY 128MB LBA MODE 2 device), and
6.2.1 PE detects it too (says it’s /dev/hd1 and /dev/hd1t6).
So, naively, I go into fdisk:
fdisk /dev/hd1
and remove the DOS partition and replace it with type 79. I write
it out, and attempt to exit. The system is in a partly hung state
at this point – i.e., fdisk never returns to the command line,
Photon shows “???” as the task name, and other commands are accepted
but hang before they start.
I can still move the mouse around, but all I can do is alt-shift-ctrl-del
to shutdown…
Suggestions?
Further: I assume that once I’m past this point, i.e., I’m able to read
and write from/to the flash device, that “all I need” to do to be able to
make a machine boot off of this compact flash device is place a /.boot
and the usual suspects via mkifs, and support files in /bin etc, right?
Thanks in advance!
-RK
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Robert Krten, PDP minicomputer collector http://www.parse.com/~pdp8/
Quick question on using a 128MB compact flash device as an EIDE slave.
Hi Rob,
Quick answer below
BIOS detects it (says it’s a SONY 128MB LBA MODE 2 device), and
6.2.1 PE detects it too (says it’s /dev/hd1 and /dev/hd1t6).
So, naively, I go into fdisk:
fdisk /dev/hd1
Do you really need partitions on flash? You might want just ‘dinit /dev/hd1’.
and remove the DOS partition and replace it with type 79. I write
it out, and attempt to exit. The system is in a partly hung state
at this point – i.e., fdisk never returns to the command line,
Photon shows “???” as the task name, and other commands are accepted
but hang before they start.
I can still move the mouse around, but all I can do is alt-shift-ctrl-del
to shutdown…
Suggestions?
This is hard one Could you boot with EIDE DMA disabled (by hitting Esc during boot, for
instance). Is any difference in behaviour in this case?
Further: I assume that once I’m past this point, i.e., I’m able to read
and write from/to the flash device, that “all I need” to do to be able to
make a machine boot off of this compact flash device is place a /.boot
and the usual suspects via mkifs, and support files in /bin etc, right?
Generally speaking yes If you want partitioned flash you have to ‘dinit’ active partition (in
this step you can pass your boot image to dinit in order to put it in place).
