My experience here is:
The Wyse S10 happily boots and runs Tinycore Linux (v2.7) from a hard drive connected to the 44-pin IDE connector.
I've also run Tinycore V2.11 from a pen drive plugged into a USB port.
As it supports USB booting I decided to use an SX0 as a way of creating hard disk installations of Linux operating systems. I could then use these to test other thin clients that would only boot from the IDE interface.
I had no problems with DSL 4.4.9 - this booted fine and I proceeded to install it on the attached hard drive.
As reported earlier Tinycore V2.11 also booted without any problems. However I found that I couldn't install it on the attached hard disk. Scanning the dmesg output I found:
Linux version 2.6.29.1-tinycore (root@box) (gcc version 4.2.2) #1337 SMP Fri Apr 10 19:12:39 EEST 2009 ...... Uniform Multi-Platform E-IDE driver amd74xx 0000:00:0f.2: UDMA100 controller amd74xx 0000:00:0f.2: IDE controller (0x1022:0x209a rev 0x01) amd74xx 0000:00:0f.2: IDE port disabled amd74xx 0000:00:0f.2: IDE port disabled AMD_IDE: probe of 0000:00:0f.2 failed with error -12 cs5536: disabled by BIOS ide_generic: please use "probe_mask=0x3f" module parameter for probing all legacy ISA IDE ports ide-gd driver 1.18 ide-cd driver 5.00 ......
So it apparently thinks that the BIOS has disabled the IDE interface - sort of plausible as the S10 does not use it but there is actually no user option in the BIOS setup screen to enable/disable it. Would Wyse go so far as to be this model specific in the unit's firmware? I wouldn't have thought so.
To check I dug out an S30. If you remove the flash from the DOM and power up it does go no further and say "No Operating System" - so there are some underlying differences. An S30 is not just an S10 with an extra DOM. Boot from the Tinycore USB pen-drive....and you get exactly the same lines in the dmesg listing about the IDE interface being "...disabled by BIOS.".
Contrast this with the DSL version:
<4>Linux version 2.4.31 (root@box) (gcc version 2.95.4 20011002 (Debian prerelease)) #6 SMP Fri Oct 21 15:15:54 EDT 2005 ..... <6>Uniform Multi-Platform E-IDE driver Revision: 7.00beta4-2.4 <6>ide: Assuming 33MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx <4>hdb: C/H/S=64207/230/230 from BIOS ignored <4>hda: IBM-DBCA-204860, ATA DISK drive <4>ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14 <4>hda: attached ide-disk driver. <4>hda: host protected area => 1 <6>hda: 9514260 sectors (4871 MB) w/420KiB Cache, CHS=629/240/63 <6>Partition check: <6> hda: hda1 <4>ide: late registration of driver. ......
..so a problem that needs an explanation - I have none at the moment. The minimal BIOS screen in the SX0 has no options for enabling or disabling the IDE port. Why does the DSL 2.4 kernel use the IDE interface quite happily whilst the Tinycore 2.6 kernel can't?
There is obviously no problem with Tinycore if you actually boot from the IDE interface! It's just the USB booting where the problem appears.
I've been trying out Tiny Core 4.0 (booting from USB) with mixed results - it ran on some examples of the S10 and not others. It was fine on an S30. The problem (when it doesn't run) is that it locks up during system initialisation:
... HEST: Table not found PCI: Using host bridge windows from ACPI; if necessary, use "pci=nocrs" and report a bug ACPI: PCI Root Bridge [PCI0] (domain 0000 [bus 00-ff]) pci_root PNP0A03:00: host bridge window [io 0x0000-0x0cf7] pci_root PNP0A03:00: host bridge window [io 0x0d00-0xac17] pci_root PNP0A03:00: host bridge window [io 0xac20-0xffff] pci_root PNP0A03:00: host bridge window [io 0x000a0000-0x000bffff] pci_root PNP0A03:00: host bridge window [io 0x000c8000-0x000dffff] pci_root PNP0A03:00: host bridge window [io 0x0efc0000-0x403fffff] pci_root PNP0A03:00: host bridge window [io 0x40500000-0xefffffff] [---hangs at this point----]
At first I thought it was related to the BIOS version in the S10 but then, when rechecking things, I found that it wouldn't run on an S10 that I'd already recorded as 'does run'.
CTL/ALT/DEL does not get it out of this. Either press and hold the power button to reset the system or briefly remove the power. Try again. You may find that it runs this time....
I haven't got a definite way of doing it, but a few moments ago removing the power for about 4 seconds worked. YMMV.
So Version 4 will run on an SX0 and you may be lucky with your example. However there is an oddity here in the system initialisation that needs tracking down.
Any comments? email me. Last update October 2011
