[Etherboot-developers] RE: Success with reusing etherboot whole in linuxBIOS.

[Hamish G. \(M. Lists\) <ha...@dp...>]

Eric and Developers,

I am very pleased to hear about this joint effort - I think it is great.

I have been looking at doing an implementation but I have a problem - the
CPU core of my target device is a 486, and I do not have the TSC, and other
than a nasty loop hack, I guess the only way of catering for timeouts is
using the PIT.

I have looked at the Etherboot code and the tick implementation is done by
flipping back into real mode to allow the PIC to service PIT interrupts
utilsing BIOS routines, and then flipping back to PMODE.Obviously in
LinuxBIOS we get into PMODE as soon as possible and it makes a lot of sense
for us to stay there. The issue now is to set up a good IDT and create a
PMODE interrupt routine for the timer.

I have broken 3 walls with my head bashing in trying to do this!

Any suggestions?

TIA

Regards

Hamish