Ok... Here is a working example.
> If I leave my little DOS system on hda (4MB ROM) and put WIN95 on
> hdc1 (1st 148MB partiton of my 260MB Type III for
> WIN95/DOS).... Then I will set up hdc2 as a 10MB LINUX swap file &
> hdc3 as a 90MB LINUX filesystem.... I can install System Commander
> on my 4MB ROM fine, it works.... But there is some kinda crazy sh*t
> that happens when you set it to boot from ROM first then PCMCIA...
Loadlin actually doesn't care about such things as boot sequences
etc. It's a DOS program that just throws away DOS and loads
kernel. Therefore all you have to do is to be able to boot indo DOS
(by any means -- from ROM, flash disk, partition, floppy ... anything)
and to have kernel availbale from DOS. Anohter thing here is that
PCMCIA _must_ be available at boot time (not at the kernel boot but
earlier -- at the time BIOS checks HW). Otherwise PCMCIA disk will be
not found and kernel will not mount root partition.
>
> So my currnet boot sequence in BIOS looks like this: 1= Floppy,
> 2=PCMCIA, 3=HDD1.... Is that correct?
No, that's wrong -- if you have on your PCMCIA disk W95 and Linux and
you boot with PCMIA inserted, it will boot into 95, right? But if you
pull out PCMCIA and boot into the DOS and _later_ try to run LOADLIN,
you will not be able to mount root (see above).
I don't have any Windows on my PC110, so I actually don't need to boot
from PCMCIA and my boot sequence is: 1-floppy, 2 -HDD1.
(Yes, I _had_ W31 but during several reinstallations of Linux and
Windows, Win partition was continuosly decreasing and finally vanished!
I'm quite happy with that fact)
What I can suggest is to add one more entry into the system commander
on your flash disk to boot W95 from PCMCIA and disable booting from it
in the BIOS. I guess you need to mark W95 partition active to do this
-- so actually you will have 2 active partitions: 1 on flash disk and
1 on PCMCIA. I don't now will it be OK with DOS?
And finally this is a micro howto:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1. Disable booting from PCMCIA in BIOS
2. Insert PCMCIA
3. Boot DOS
4. Put loadlin into some directory on the falsh disk. Let's say
c:\loadlin.exe
5. Put linux kernel into the same place (it can be anywhere, but just
let's make life easier). i.e. c:\vmlinuz
6.When you boot dos execute command:
loadlin vmlinuz root=/dev/hdc1 ro
~~~your linux root partition
-- Dmytro Kovalev