[ale] linux box from bios, can it be done?

[hirsch at zapmedia.com]

Jeff Hubbs writes:
 > Might want to shave that time by a factor of ten or so.  See
 > http://slashdot.org/articles/01/08/27/1419238.shtml.

Nah.  That claim was .8 seconds to the lilo boot.  What Jim saw was 8
seconds to linux prompt.  They are really about the same if you then
have lilo boot linux from a ROM chip.

Jim was talking about LinuxBIOS which boots off a Disk-On-Chip instead
of a BIOS chip.  There is no BIOS at all, just enough code to get the
kernel up and running.  General Software boots a standard BIOS that
has they cut wayyyy down on the amount of memory checking, hardware
initializing, etc.  I think the General Software solution would be a
little easier to use, since it doesn't really change the boot system
at all.

--Michael

 > 
 > - Jeff
 > 
 > James Kinney wrote:
 > > 
 > > There is a linux bios chip. The supplier escapes me but I'm sure it won't
 > > escape google. I've seen it it action. Think 8-10 seconds from power-on to
 > > prompt with a journaling filesystem.
 > > 
 > > On Tue, 28 Aug 2001, Stephen Turner wrote:
 > > 
 > > > with the advance in technology it seems to me that we
 > > > could have larger bios chips. is it not possible for
 > > > us to buy a larger chip for use as bios? thus allowing
 > > > us to possibly make a lfs or linux from scratch file
 > > > server that boots entirely from bios? with shadowing..
 > > > im sure something could be arranged very nicely that
 > > > would allow us to use the full 80 gig hard disks (or
 > > > bigger ones) ?  i have read that lfs can make a apache
 > > > web server os at the incredible small size of 5 meg.
 > > > and with flash chips progressing in size (i know ram
 > > > is :) ) would it not be a possibility or even
 > > > desirable task to make linux os bios? that would allow
 > > > hd's to become only a storage/backup medium :)
 > > >
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