[syslinux] Special Boot issue.

Andy Kennedy akennedy at techmoninc.com
Mon Dec 4 12:33:36 PST 2006


Personal background:
Much of my experience is with C on Linux (from 1994).  I can read 
Assembly, however, not write it well (I have had formal training in 
Assembly on the I386, however, never used it).

The system:
An AMD 586 embedded system with AM29F040 Chip(s) on board.  These two 
flash chips make up the BIOS and the primary storage.  The system was 
designed and built for use with Caldera Dr. DOS with a proprietary file 
system "Flash File System" on it.  The BIOS recognizes the flash and 
maps it into memory in 64kb segments.  I'm not completely sure how the 
BIOS loads Dr. DOS, however, I did find (via a hex editor) what appears 
to be a MBR at the zero offset of the zeroth page of the flash.

What I need:
BIOS maps the pages of the flash via calls to a specific port with an 
8-bit argument.  I want to modify (or have someone help me modify) 
Syslinux to be able to grab a kernel off the raw pages of the flash.

For someone with experience creating boot loaders, this wouldn't be a 
tough task.  However, I am not that person.  If you kind people would 
direct me to a good resource so that I can complete this task, I'd be 
exceedingly pleased (or, if you'd be willing to assist me [write what I 
need], I may be able to shift USD toward you).

Thanks in advance for your assistance,
Andy Kennedy
Sr. Software Engineer
Technical Monitoring Research Inc.




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