Hey, this one goes out to all you kernel hackers out there.
After 4 years, I've once again become interested in installing Linux on my
HP OmniBook 300. Because it's an aswesome computer, and I think DOS 5 is
a complete waste of its skill.
[Background. The OB300 is a vintage 386-20, with a passive reflective
640x480 LCD display. Basically an oversize TI calculator running DOS]
Anyway, from my first tests, I discovered that I can indeed boot the
kernel using loadlin. But it immediately freaks out because it can't read
(or even think about) my primary media... solid-state PCMCIA flash cards.
Now, I briefly tried looking up some data on the OB300's PCMCIA chipset (I
think the first standard was still being developed when this computer was
made) and quickly decided that wasn't the route to go. And HP told me to
go to hell when I asked.
But DOS seems to work just fine using the int 13 interface to access the
flash disks. So now my question... can I do that in Linux?
I don't see any block device support (and most people would agree an int
13 block device would be stupid), but I think I can write one myself. All
it would have to do is make the switch into real mode, call the int 13
interface, and then come back. Will Linux tolerate that? As far as I
know, many drivers use a real mode interrupt on laptops to trigger their
power saving capabilities (suspend, etc...), so I suspect it would be
okay.
Can anyone stop me before I go too far? Or should I go ahead and write
this thing?
-Chuck
