Baslinux mailing list

[3aoo-cvfd AT dea.spamcon.org]

Day Brown wrote:
>
> What happens if you launch BL from a SCSI; do you hafta 
> install a scsi driver to save something on the scsi drive, 
> or- since dos was driving the scsi, can BL put whatever 
> you want someplace so that dos can access it?

Ramdisk BL has two components:  the kernel (zimage) and
the filesystem (baslinux.gz).  Both of these must be
accessible to DOS, because it is DOS (loadlin.exe) that 
launches them.  It doesn't matter what the hardware is,
as long as DOS can see those files, it can boot BL.

I once booted BL on an ancient Seagate MFM drive (pre-IDE
with two data cables).  DOS ran fine on that HD and had
no problem booting BL.  However, once BL was running, it 
was impossible to access that drive.  Most Linux kernels
lack the ability to use such an old HD.

Once the kernel boots and finds the root filesystem, DOS
is overwritten.  Any capabilities that DOS had are gone.  
So, even though you can boot BL from a SCSI drive (using DOS),
it has no SCSI capability once it is up and running.  To have
SCSI capability in BL necessitates replacing the default zimage 
with a kernel from Slackware that has SCSI ability.

It would be quite possible to compile a kernel with no ability
to read/write to disk.  Not IDE, not FD, not anything.  And
yet, you could still boot that kernel using loadlin.exe.

Cheers,
Steven