On 8/5/06, Rik van Riel <riel@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Rajat Jain wrote: > Actually I was thinking that if it is possible to perform all the Disk > IO operations using the BIOS routines, then why can't we write a > SINGLE disk driver that will work with all the kinds of disks. Because that would be incredibly slow. You could only have one I/O request in flight at a time, and the system could not run other processes while I/O was being done.
Oh ... I got you. That sure sounds like a lot of baggage, but despite all the disadvantages you just mentioned, it will STILL be of lot of use to me.
> So all this seems like a bad idea ... or should I say TOTALLY IMPOSSIBLE? It might be possible, but it is still a very bad idea :)
Okay ... NOW we are talking. Any idea / links / references on where should I start looking for? How tough / practical is it to switch from protected mode to real mode and back? Is it possible at all (in linux)? Thanks, Rajat -- Kernelnewbies: Help each other learn about the Linux kernel. Archive: http://mail.nl.linux.org/kernelnewbies/ FAQ: http://kernelnewbies.org/faq/
