BIOS and basic hardware drivers

I have a situation in which a debian cd installation disk won't boot,
but a Knoppix livecd disk will boot, and so I need to understand better
how the initial drivers get loaded. If I try to boot the debian cd
installation disk without offering any alternative boot method in BIOS,
I get a boot failure, system halted error.

It is my understanding that the CPU calls a set of programs on the ROM
chip, one of which is BIOS. I gather that BIOS holds a series of device
drivers that enables the system to function prior to boot. BIOS
setup seems to control which drivers get loaded so that a boot can
begin. Is this accurate?

In the case of my problem, there are certain drivers that will be needed
for the system to access my IDE cdrom drive. How can I find out what
they are and verify that the BIOS has indeed loaded them?

If the system accesses the cdrom in some cases (Knoppix), but not others
(debian install disk), should I infer that the debian install disk needs a
driver that the Knoppix disk does not? What could distinguish the two
disks in terms of their initial requirements?

If a needed driver, such as the one to access a cdrom drive, is not
being loaded, can I get it to behave?

What is the correct term to refer to the drivers built into BIOS, as
distinguished from the drivers in initrd?

--

Haines Brown, KB1GRM



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