Booting from floppy

[Eric W. Biederman]

Peter Lister <P.Lister at sychron.com> writes:

> > So there are two issues: a) DOS isn't supported and b) the floppy as
> > a boot device isn't supported. That will make it a very difficult
> > sell for mobo manufacturers. Can you imagine me buying a Linux PC
> > with LinuxBIOS and it crashing. How am I going to repair it then?
> 
> It's Ron's privilege to name the project as he sees fit, but when
> people first see "LinuxBIOS", misinterpretation does seem to be
> common. "LinuxBIOS" does *not* mean "a BIOS for Linux" - for one
> thing, Linux does needs no BIOS. 

Bogus.
Linux needs a BIOS, to initialize the platform. Which we have shown 
the hard way.  Linux simply needs not any help after it gets
except on poorly designed ports.

And LinuxBIOS is a BIOS for Linux.

> The project's original intention was
> to put Linux in a mobo rom *instead* of a legacy PC BIOS.

Which is also suggested by the name LinuxBIOS.  Unfortunately
that does not work have as well as initially envisioned.

> The code base has turned out to be useful for much more than that, and
> it now supports other boot loader code, such as Etherboot. The UMD
> guys have just created ADLO to glue the Bochs PC BIOS together with
> LinuxBIOS for the hardware setup, so that various OSes (MS included)
> are supported. This is very new, so give it time - but I don't think
> we'll need to wait long, this stuff is moving fast.

One small step at a time.

Eric