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From: wen-king@cit-vlsi.Caltech.Edu (Wen-King Su)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.microport,comp.unix.xenix
Subject: ROM disk [ was Re: RAM disk ]
Message-ID: <6052@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu>
Date: 9 Apr 88 05:11:30 GMT
References: <1010@daisy.UUCP> <802@spdcc.COM> <1962@ubc-cs.UUCP>
Sender: news@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu
Reply-To: wen-king@cit-vlsi.UUCP (Wen-King Su)
Organization: California Institute of Technology
Lines: 24

In article <1962@ubc-cs.UUCP> pajari@grads.cs.ubc.ca (George Pajari) writes:
>
<Driver Design Labs sells RAM-DISK drivers for SCO XENIX, IBM XENIX, (soon
>Microport) and will port the driver to almost any machine given a good 
<excuse (i.e. an order).
>

I have thought about getting a portable 386 box to run UNIX on, but I
didn't want to have to ballance a spinning hard disk on my laps.
Reading about RAM-DISK drivers gave me an idea about building a
transportable, shake-able, kick-able, virtually indestructible :-) UNIX
box, whose root partition resides on a ROM-DISK.  Given that there
exists a working RAM-DISK driver, it should be pretty simple to modify
the dirver to treat a block of ROM as a disk.  User who wants to build
a ROM-DISK can first create a RAM-DISK, copy all the necessary files
into the RAM-DISK partition, then burn the content of the RAM-DISK into
ROM.  Does anyone know whether UNIX can be booted off a ROM disk?  Does
Driver Design Labs plan to provide ROM-DISK drivers?  Personally, I
have never touched a 386 box, so I do not know whether any of this
makes sense.

/*------------------------------------------------------------------------*\
| Wen-King Su  wen-king@vlsi.caltech.edu  Caltech Corp of Cosmic Engineers |
\*------------------------------------------------------------------------*/