Re: Floppy Support

On Mon, 5 May 2003 16:25, Terry Lambert wrote:
> Daniel O'Connor wrote:
> > Or use modules..
> > The vast majority of drivers are loadable as modules. It would be
> > feasible to standardise the PCI ID tables of drivers and then generate a
> > list from it which you can use to load modules for cards you find.
>
> ...loading them from some media for which the BIOS is capable
> of causing the loader to pre-load it using BIOS calls, or for
> which the kernel can load it only if there is a driver for
> that media statically compiled into the kernel, or for which a
> driver has been loaded via BIOS calls by the loader before the
> kernel is started.
>
> Q:	I have a CDROM on controller XXX, how do I install?
>
> A:	Load the driver for controller XXX from the CDROM.
>
> Q:	If I could access the CDROM without the !_at_#!$*! driver,
> 	I wouldn't need to *LOAD* the driver!
>
> A:	Oh.
>
>
> Still a "catch-22".

I am generally assuming access to another PC here.

I understand what you are saying, and yes it would be good if the loader could 
use the BIOS to load drivers it determined you had hardware for or wished to 
load, but I think that is a non-trivial amount of work.

If the loader groked cd9660 already it would be a lot easier.

-- 
Daniel O'Connor software and network engineer
for Genesis Software - http://www.gsoft.com.au
"The nice thing about standards is that there
are so many of them to choose from."
  -- Andrew Tanenbaum
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