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  • From: sindi keesan <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>
  • To: baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [BL] interesting info for those with trident cards (possibly applies to others)
  • Date: Fri, 23 Dec 2005 14:27:19 +0000 (UTC)

On Thu, 22 Dec 2005, Samual Acorn wrote:

*gets the WD-40 out*

heres a quote from that page;
"Using zImage instead of bzImage avoids the problem (since zImage is
not loaded high)"

renaming the file wont change anything... if its compressed it must be
decompressed (loadlin detects the compression... AFAIK the naming of
the file is for convenience only) .... and since there is only 640k of
low mem that means it gets decompressed into high memory.... and in
order to (properly) load anything beyond the 1MB barrier A20 must be
turned on...

(zimages can only be made as big as ~500k because anything bigger wont
fit into low memory... )

Thanks for this explanation. Does it compile as gzipped vs bzipped?

I made my latest kernel as a bzImage but it is 484K. Would it boot faster or more reliably as a zimage?


so why does basic linux suffer? my theory is that the problem is not
with loadlin but DOS... DOS 7 will load himem.sys regardless if it is
in config.sys or not... IIRC himem.sys turns A20 on.... so with A20

I am using DOS 7.1 standalone (from China). I just turned on the computer and hit F5 to bypass my startrup files. Typed 'mem /c /p' (I don't know where this 'mem' came from)
Modules using memory below 1Mb:
MS-DOS 79K conventional memory
COMMAND 10K conventional memory
Nothing in upper memory
FREE 550K (with various drivers loaded it goes down to about 528K, less if I add scsi or usb drivers)

I don't see himem.sys here.

If I don't hit F5 I actually have MORE free lower memory:
conventional upper
system 11K 7K
himem 1
emm386 3
aspi8dos 21 (for scsi zip drive)
doskey 4
oakcdrom 35
command 7
mscdex 23
Free 600 1

If I had a zImage of 600K would it boot from this system?

Note there is no 'MS-DOS 79K' - it must be taking over the functions of himem.sys, 'system' and other things by default.

already on.. running loadlin just adds to any problems that may be
there since it might try to turn it on... or see if its on.... and
ceartain methods of checking if its on will turn it off (or viceversa)
or cause other hardware... like the trident card... to get messed
up...

What exactly does the trident card do wrong? I did not follow the explanation.

a trick; format a floppy and 'sys' dos to it... delete command.com
from that floppy and make a config.sys with a single line in it;

SHELL="loadlin ........." (where .... is loadlins paramiters)

you can of course keep baslin on the harddrive... just change the
loadlin parameters to point to where the kernel and root filesystems
are.... that way you have a clean DOS that only booted to real
mode.... letting loadlin and linux do whatever they wish with A20 and
the system memory... this would of course only be a temorary "see if
it fixes the problem" type of thing...

What exactly does this do?

btw, bigger kernels also have better support for broken hardware...
that is... if they are loaded properly...

Is it possible to rewrite the kernel source code or the Makefile or something in order to get a smaller 2.4 kernel that does not work on quite as much hardware but fits on a floppy disk better?

YMMV

On 22/12/05, sindi keesan <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org> wrote:
It says to avoid a certain hardware problem by using zImage instead of
bzImage. But if the kernel is over a certain size (around 500K?) you
are not allowed to make a zImage, only a bzImage. I have been renaming my
bzImages to zimage and loadlin works anyway. Are these gzipped and
bzipped files that loadlin can detect without .gz or .bz2 ?


On Thu, 22 Dec 2005, Samual Acorn wrote:

playing around with lowlevel hardware access in windoze 2k (yes i know
its a no no... but i like playing) i had problems getting a ceartain
programs timing to work properly... would slow waaaay down till i hit
a key (any key)... then "0x60" flew out of a rather rusty part of my
brain... fixed my problem and lead me to search for what all (if
anything other than the keyboard) is at 0x60 and i came across a
rather interesting page... might be of some use;

http://www.win.tue.nl/~aeb/linux/kbd/A20.html




--
--sam
http://mephitus.renamon.org/
"When you've done something right, no one will be sure you've done
anything at all." -- Futurama
--
_______________________________________________
BasLinux mailing list
BasLinux AT lists.ibiblio.org
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/baslinux


keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org
_______________________________________________
BasLinux mailing list
BasLinux AT lists.ibiblio.org
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/baslinux



--
--sam
http://mephitus.renamon.org/
"When you've done something right, no one will be sure you've done
anything at all." -- Futurama
--
_______________________________________________
BasLinux mailing list
BasLinux AT lists.ibiblio.org
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/baslinux


keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org




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