From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 7953 invoked by alias); 11 Jul 2005 20:26:42 -0000 Mailing-List: contact ecos-discuss-help@ecos.sourceware.org; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: ecos-discuss-owner@ecos.sourceware.org Received: (qmail 7904 invoked by uid 22791); 11 Jul 2005 20:26:36 -0000 Received: from smtpauth04.mail.atl.earthlink.net (HELO smtpauth04.mail.atl.earthlink.net) (209.86.89.64) by sourceware.org (qpsmtpd/0.30-dev) with ESMTP; Mon, 11 Jul 2005 20:26:36 +0000 Received: from 68-114-60-24.dhcp.davl.vt.charter.com ([68.114.60.24] helo=[127.0.0.1]) by smtpauth04.mail.atl.earthlink.net with asmtp (Exim 4.34) id 1Ds4rK-0004AL-V8; Mon, 11 Jul 2005 16:26:35 -0400 Message-ID: <42D2D5F0.2050600@mindspring.com> Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2005 20:26:00 -0000 From: Frank Pagliughi User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.2 (Windows/20050317) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: "R. Vamshi Krishna" CC: ecos-discuss@ecos.sourceware.org References: <20050711114120.GC15048@lunn.ch> <20050711143719.CB4FD4936B@rivatek.dnsalias.net> <42D29269.1050709@cse.iitb.ac.in> In-Reply-To: <42D29269.1050709@cse.iitb.ac.in> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-ELNK-Trace: 4d82f965df0f6dd9e3f977c6d1ea408f0a9da525759e26543d9199452a9c0ad61258ed5f12a772d2c9b5e52464f59f68350badd9bab72f9c350badd9bab72f9c Subject: Re: [ECOS] Re: A suitable x86 based board X-SW-Source: 2005-07/txt/msg00125.txt.bz2 R. Vamshi Krishna wrote: > Grant Edwards wrote: > >> In gmane.os.ecos.general, you wrote: >> >> >> >>> Yeah PC Motherboard is also fine. But what I wanted was that >>> is it possible to do away with a floppy drive totally ? >>> >> >> >> Just don't install one? About half of my Linux boxes don't >> have floppy disk drives. >> >> >> >>> We have hard-disk/usb pen drive for logging data .. And we >>> have ideflash. >>> >> >> >> OK. >> >> >> >>> Is it possible to have the application on the >>> hard-drive/usb-pen drive /flash such that manual loading can >>> be done away with. >>> >> >> >> I don't understand teh question. Assuming it _is_ a question. >> >> > What I meant was that so far with i386 PC as target I had been booting > using FLOPPY + Redboot. > > Can I do away with the floppy drive and boot the pc/board and load the > application using ideflash and/or > usb pendrive ?? > -- Vamshi > > Oops, I almost forgot.... There's another way to boot eCos applications on an i386/PC: from DOS! There's an open-source DOS extender that's part of the OSLib project, by Luca Abeni. It's Multiboot compliant, so it can launch eCos executables if they're compiled correctly. It's called eXtender, and can be found at: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=14468&package_id=13845 The idea I tried is not to use the extender to get in and out of DOS, but to boot into eCos at power-up and never return. I haven't done too much with it, but initial tests have worked well. I was mainly trying to get around the headaches of using eCos from the DiskOnChip. To use it, just compile eCos for GRUB startup type and select "Load into higher memory" (CYGHWR_HAL_I386_PC_LOAD_HIGH -> true). This will create a Multiboot compliant application and place it in a suitable memory area for the extender. (Note that there's a recent patch to eCos to allow you to use Load High with GRUB startup for just this purpose). Then load something like DOS, RomDOS, or FreeDOS onto the DiskOnChip and make an autoexec.bat file that launches your eCos app, using the extender. Frank Pagliughi -- Before posting, please read the FAQ: http://ecos.sourceware.org/fom/ecos and search the list archive: http://ecos.sourceware.org/ml/ecos-discuss