[lug] Parallel Port boot cd

[David L. Anselmi]

Munro Jim-AJM083 wrote:
>  
> I have a PC104 system I'm trying to load linux onto, it has only 1
> ide input (supports 2 drives), 1 parallel and 2 serial ports.  I have
> a MicroSolutions backpack pport CDROM that I am trying to use but the
> distro I'm using, slackware 9.1 (using the pportide.i boot) doesn't
> seem to recognize and I'm wondering if I need to pass in boot
> parameters or if it should just autodetect it.

So it isn't clear whether your problem is that the slack kernel doesn't 
recognize the CD, or that you can't boot from the CD.  And you didn't 
say what specific device this is.

The PC104 spec doesn't seem to cover much beyond the bus, so probably 
you have to look at the docs for your device.  I'm guessing your problem 
is booting (because slack will be able to read a parallel IDE device, 
almost certainly).  Booting is a BIOS question.

And perhaps you need to use an embedded version of Linux rather than slack.

pc104.org seems like a slow way to find your answer, so I'd shoot for 
the vendor's site.  There also seem to be some researchers who keep good 
notes:

http://www.physics.utah.edu/~wiencke/pc104html/5500.html
http://www.jlab.org/~saw/pc104/

Dave