From: evansmp@uhura.aston.ac.uk (Mark Evans) Subject: Re: Any word on a Microchannel Linux Date: 21 Jul 1992 10:27:41 GMT
U21187@uicvm.uic.edu (John Schulien) writes:
: I'd love to dive into Linux, but I already have a PS2 55SX and can't
: really justify buying an AT machine just for Linux. I don't think
: that I'm alone.
:
: Is anyone working on a Microchannel Linux?
The only problem with the MCA is in the HD interface.
The situation is
1) CMOS ram on a PS/2 contains no info on HD's, thus the code to check
the HD's simply dosn't get run.
The info in the BIOS (and maybe from the controller) is correct about
the HD geometry.
(in fact the Microsoft diagnostic program MSD appears to be confused
by the geometry of PS/2 HD's)
2) PS/2's have a 6 (or maybe 8) bit register for number of heads on the
HD, AT bus machines only have a 4 bit register for this.
(some PS/2's claim to have 64 disc heads, it is the controller which
sorts out this fudge)
3) Documentation to find out exactly what is going on is hard to come
by....
4) Untill I can find some way to cross build a kernal (with lots of
printk's added) I havn't got a clue as to how to get this to work...
Other than that FD's memory management printer and just about everything
else work fine.
I posted to comp.pc.hardware.ps2, but got no response.
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