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NAND behind INT13 BIOS interface

DISCUSSION Indrek Kruusa 2 participants 3 messages Jul 19, 2006 – Jul 20, 2006 Memory technology devices (MTD)

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#0 lore raw

Hi!

I have board with NAND and BIOS seems to have built-in driver for that. BIOS provides INT 13 interface for the NAND too.

Is there a solution to access such NAND (with the help of INT 13) as a usual block device from Linux?

Best regards,
Indrek

#1 lore raw
Quoted 5 lines · Indrek Kruusa

I have board with NAND and BIOS seems to have built-in driver for that. BIOS provides INT 13 interface for the NAND too.

Is there a solution to access such NAND (with the help of INT 13) as a usual block device from Linux?

There used to be such a hack -- it's quite evil and fragile though. You have to switch back into real mode to invoke the BIOS call, and you need to preserve enough of the pre-boot environment that it can still work. Running it in vm86 mode might also work, if you're lucky.

Seriously though, I wouldn't bother -- just implement a translation layer in Linux which is compatible.

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dwmw2
#2 lore raw
Quoted 5 lines · David Woodhouse
Quoted 3 lines · Indrek Kruusa

I have board with NAND and BIOS seems to have built-in driver for that. BIOS provides INT 13 interface for the NAND too.

Is there a solution to access such NAND (with the help of INT 13) as a usual block device from Linux?

Quoted 7 lines

There used to be such a hack -- it's quite evil and fragile though. You have to switch back into real mode to invoke the BIOS call, and you need to preserve enough of the pre-boot environment that it can still work. Running it in vm86 mode might also work, if you're lucky.

Seriously though, I wouldn't bother -- just implement a translation layer in Linux which is compatible.

Thanks for the advice.
It may be that I switch to LinuxBIOS and then there could be more options to cope with that.

Indrek