Hi,

I have an ICOP VSX6154 board which has a 2MB SPI Flash Disk onboard. I develop a Linux driver for I/O access the flash. The m25p80 driver registers it as a MTD device with one partition. The mtdblock driver creates a block device named 'mtdblock0' in /dev directory. So I can mount the flash.

According to manufacturer's recommendations the flash may be formatted by spitool.exe provided by him. To use this tool I made a bootable FreeDOS USB flash drive. I formatted the spi flash disk using this tool. The flash was formatted as FAT12.

The purpose to use the flash is to keep Linux kernel, initrd and syslinux bootloader recorded on. They'll be used to boot the Linux (with /dev/ram as root device) and then this will be downloading libraries and binaries from local network needed to run my software. These files recorded on flash will be eventually updated by external action (perhaps from network) without rebooting the system.

This is the problem: If I copy the files (kernel and initrd) to spi flash disk (remembering that the flash is mounted as a block device) and install syslinux by Linux booted through PXE when I reboot the system and it starts the booting process using the spi flash disk it shows "Boot error". But if I copy them and install syslinux by FreeDOS so the BIOS can boot the linux correctly. I need the first case running.
Files written on spi flash through Linux using the driver I developed can only be read successful by Linux.

The system is Busybox (v1.14.1) running over Kernel 2.6.31.

I'm sorry about my english but I hope I was clear to explain my problem. Any help would be appreciated.

My best guess is that the location of the kernel is passed incorrectly. Or you get the error at later stage? Try to compare the bootloader image generated in both cases. There should be some difference.

I think the syslinux bootloader is not finding the ldlinux.sys needed in boot process. Or not?
I read the flash in RAW mode and I realized that FAT Directory Entries are written starting at 41st sector when I use FreeDOS. But when I use Linux the FAT Directory Entries are written starting at 16th sector. According to boot sector the FAT Directory Entries can be written starting at 13rd sector up to 28th sector. The boot sector was recorded on flash by spitool.exe running on FreeDOS.
I forgot to mention that the BIOS emulates the SPI flash disk as floppy.
I need to check the difference of the syslinux versions used in Linux and FreeDOS. I think they are not the same.
Thank you.