[CUWiN-Dev] upgrade/partition table problems

[Bill Comisky]

On 2/28/07, David Young <dyoung at pobox.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 28, 2007 at 04:06:20PM -0600, Bill Comisky wrote:
> > I'll take a look at fixlabel when I get a chance.  As far as PXE
> > booting, is there any way to initiate that without having serial
> > console access in order to interrupt the boot process and enter the
> > BIOS?
>
> If the BIOS is not the very new[1], /dev/cmos is present, and the kernel
> attached a device called 'cmos' at boot, then you can change the boot
> order in the CMOS RAM using, say, dd(1).  ISTR you need to change it to
> 'f0 80 81 ff'.  It is probably '80 81 f0 ff', now.
>

yep, bytes 0x21-0x24 of /dev/cmos are currently 80 81 F0 FF.  cool!
Do you know if the old BIOS has the same PXE timeout (couple seconds)?
 I vaguely remember debating doing this before but reading about a
long (~45 secs) timeout before booting to flash dissuaded me.

Just read a bit of the soekris mailing list archives..  do you have to
update the cmos checksum somewhere after altering /dev/cmos (like
after using cmoswrite from the old BIOS)?

thanks,
Bill

-- 
Bill Comisky
bcomisky at pobox.com