I have a old Surecom EP-3501 internet gateway, and because i have no plans on going back to 56k or ISDN i have thought of using for something else. It contains a Ali M6117C CPU (386SX + chipsset) with 1 mb DRAM and 512 kb flash ROM, a Ali M5113 SuperI/O, where only the two serial ports are used, and a Realtek RTL8019 Ethernet chip.
Is it posible to put Linux on it? Or are there any alternative OS'es, which support a terminal on the serial port and TCP/IP?
The BIOS + everything else would have to be in the same chip, is that a problem? Does Linux even need a BIOS to boot? How are memory mapped on the x86? Since i probaly have to reflash the ROM many times in order to get it to work, i plan to remove the chip and fit a socket instead, and i wonder if i could use a larger ROM. The same goes for the RAM, there are two V53C16258HK35 chips with 512 kb each, the same chips are commonly found on many old S3 cards, and i wonder if it's possible to stack another chip on top of the original ones and connect the MSB address bit to the memory controller (did so on my Palm III long time ago).
I hope someone are able to answer some of my question, because making this board do something would be really cool.