Date: Mon, 17 May 1993 12:19:21 CDT From: John Schulien <U21187@uicvm.uic.edu> Subject: Re: How about a Linux kernel that uses the BIOS for harddrive I/O
In article <1t0lck$b01@nwfocus.wa.com>, ken@halcyon.com (Ken Pizzini) says:
>In article <93133.142422U21187@uicvm.uic.edu> John Schulien says: d
>>How hard would it be to write a "BIOS" Linux kernel; one that only
>>uses the native BIOS routines. It might be slow, it might bite the frog,
>>but it would probably *work* on almost everything, and would serve
>>as a bootstrap system for the development of more efficient drivers.
>
>This would be tricky, given that many (most?) BIOSes are _not_ reentrant;
>they are designed for the single-tasking MS-DOS, not for multi-tasking
>OSes such as Linux.
Perhaps you could block on a "bios" semaphore?
Something I realized yesterday ... Linux runs in protected mode, and
the bios routines probably assume real mode. Am I correct?
> --Ken Pizzini