Hello, I tried Chris's idea, and I see a port where power should probably be on the floppy drive. Only thing, is I can't find a chord that goes to the power on the floppy. Thanks, Tyler Littlefield Unlimited horizons head coder. check out our website: tysplace.homelinux.net msn: compgeek134 at hotmail.com aim: st8amnd2005 skype: st8amnd127 ----- Original Message ----- From: Doug Sutherland <doug@xxxxxxxxxxx> To: Speakup is a screen review system for Linux. <speakup at braille.uwo.ca> Sent: Tuesday, February 06, 2007 8:33 PM Subject: Re: slightly o-t, looking for os help > If you are building an os for fun, it might be good to use > an emulator rather than physical hardware. There are > many around for example bochs will emulate the x86 > hardware, and there are others for ARM and countless > other architectures. > > On x86 the BIOS will expect a bootloader in a the first > sector of the first fixed drive. Then it does a bootloader > chain from there to other bootloaders (ie linux lilo can > boot initially then point to ntloader which loads windows). > You have source available for various x86 bootloaders > like lilo, grub, etc to peruse. > > On embedded systems there is fixed flash hardware > and you can look at the source for u-boot, redboot, > and many others. > > If you have not tried the linuxfromscratch exercise, > that is very interesting, especially to understand how > linux and the whole GNU toolchain works. > > http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/ > > The way toolchains work for embedded is very much > like the linuxfromscratch, except building smaller > using tiny libraries (uclibc, newlib etc) and tiny > executables (busybox and the like) and building for > a different target architecture. There is something > called crosstool to assist in building toolchains for > different architectures. If its all for fun you could > for example build an ARM toolchain and load onto > virtual hardware (emulator) and it would be just > like loading onto a PDA or phone. > > Just playing with linuxfromscratch can keep one busy > for some time, getting into cross development tools > can keep one busy for a very long time. Building your > own OS from scratch, perhaps you should get someone > to slide pizza under the door every once in a while :) > > -- Doug > > _______________________________________________ > Speakup mailing list > Speakup at braille.uwo.ca > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
