On Fri, Sep 26, 2003 at 04:59:45PM -0500, Dennis Wicks wrote: > Well, if memory serves, the 2540 is a buffered device and if you get > a read check or a card jam the system will only get an intervention > required. Fix the problem and push the start button and you are on > your way!
Yes, but I'm not sure the Linux boot code is able to handle such exceptions -- it's not in a very durable state at that point in it's life, and error checking is kind of low priority. In any case -- in the interest of Science, here are the results of the test: 1) A full Linux IPL deck puched onto real cards for Debian 3.0 is a little less than 23000 physical cards, as someone already mentioned, just about 2 cases of cards. 2) Attaching the physical reader to the virtual machine as 010 and doing an IPL 010 CLEAR *does* successfully start and clearly gets to the point of reading in the initrd. I didn't try to do a complete IPL for time reasons, but when I stopped the process, it had read about a third of the deck, and displaying storage showed the right contents. This took about 40 minutes. 3) At the rate it was going, I'd make a guess that it would have taken another hour or so to complete reading the deck. I now have more note cards than I'll be able to use in a *lifetime*...8-) Better living through Science, -- db
