When a system starts up, it goes through the boot sequence encoded in ROM. At the end of this sequence it reads off of the first specified boot device that it finds for further instructions. If it hits a drive with LILO or GRUB on it, then you get the Linux prompt. If you select Linux or have it automatically boot Linux then LILO or GRUB will load the Linux kernel into memory. When the kernel starts, it bypasses the BIOS and accesses the hardware directly. There are a few parameters that are supposed to be read from CMOS if I remember correctly, but hardware that is not detected by the BIOS will get detected by the kernel. I think that what the kernel usually reads is how the disk geometry is set up in the BIOS so that Linux can be more compatible with dos/windows. I did notice on my 486 (back in the earlier days of Linux) that cylinders that could not be programmed into the CMOS and that DOS did not pick up, Linux picked up and I could use them. Linux's direct use of hardware has not under any circumstances, including usage of things that are shut off or not properly set up in CMOS, caused any stability problems for me or anyone that I know. (For my Dad it has been a real boon because one of his systems has win95, win98, and Linux between two drives and he can disable one of the drives all of the time to keep win95 and win98 from clobbering each other and still be able to move stuff between win95 and win98 without the hazards of enabling both drives at the same time.) "Michael R. Batchelor" wrote: > >This just ain't so. I got a 45 Gig IBM drive (the same that this > thread was > >started on) to detect under linux on an Ultra33 controller when the > turned off > >IDE drive detection in the BIOS. (The machine would hang on when it > tried to > >detect the drive on boot.) > > OK, so you've got your BIOS set to something like > > ide0/slave = not installed > > And that gets you through the BIOS choking when > you boot? And this works OK? Good to know. How > does it work? Pretty well or flaky? > > MB
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