Re: Kernel on 1997-05-01 boot disks missing stuff.
On Sat, 3 May 1997, Philip Hands wrote:
> > Dale Scheetz wrote:
> > > I gets to the point just before "uncompressing kernel" and locks with the
> > > error: A20 gating failure.
> >
> > This is the second time I've received a report of this and I'm pretty
> > sure it's because of the Toshiba Tecra patch. I'll remove it from the
> > next release which will mean the people with Toshiba Tecra's won't be able
> > to boot.
> > Any opinions?
>
> As someone with a Tecra I suppose I'm biased, but in fact it doesn't
really affect me because I know how to fix the problem --- it would be
nice if the patch was selectable from the kernel ``make config'' though.
>
> Dwarf, Is it possible to get the A20 problem to go away by playing with
the BIOS setting for A20 ?
Nope. The bios allows for the enabling (and disabling) "fast A20 gating"
but neither setting causes the error to go away. It fails in both cases.
>
> I think we need to assess the relative numbers of people who are going
to be affected by this, and go with pleasing the biggest group. I would
guess there are not that many people with Tecra's because they are not
exactly cheap, but how many motherboards are giving the A20 problem ?
>
The machine I'm testing on is an old 486DX on a Trident mother board with
AMI bios from 1992, but I have seen the same failure on my more recent P75
machine, so for me the market looks like "all" non-Tecra machines fail ;-)
I would suggest providing a "tecra" kernel image along side the "linux"
image provide in the base disk set. This could be placed in a seperate
location for "special kernels" but at this point its the only one.
> A reasonable solution might be to include a Tecra specific 1.44 boot
disk (toshresc.bin) image in the disk set. At least then people can get
booted, and you don't need a 1.2 version because laptops don't have them.
It would take less space to provide the kernel image and let the user copy
it to the "standard" rescue disk.
Luck,
Dwarf
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