On Tue, Feb 15, 2000 at 02:14:12PM -0500, Jon Lindgren wrote:
> On Tue, 15 Feb 2000, Guan Yang wrote:
> 
> > The guy who wrote http://www.multimania.com/multia uses Linux, and he
> > boots that weird operating system from an IDE drive in his Multia. He
> > confirmed this to me via email.
> > 
> > But the NetBSD FAQs suggest that this is not possible; perhaps only
> > Linux can boot from IDE on Multia?
> 
> I believe this stems from the fact that NetBSD boots from the SRM, while
> Linux boots from the ARC.  IIRC, the ARC firmware understands how to talk
> to the IDE controller while the SRM doesn't.  Using the ARC for NetBSD
> requires that we write a new piece of abstraction code (the PAL, I think),  
> which I believe to be rather difficult.  I think Linux either 1) has a
> custom one, or 2) uses the NT PAL code.

Linux uses an old PAL code from the EvaluationBoard days (IIRC). To make
things more fun PALcode tends to be heavily machine dependent. 

-- 
Wilko Bulte 					Arnhem, The Netherlands	  
    						WWW : http://www.tcja.nl