boot rom

[MonkeyX]

Hi I was just wondering if anyone could help me figure out how to make a pc boot from a bootable rom. I am planning on using the motherboard in a small robot and would prefer to not have the added power drain of a seperate harddrive. I was hoping to use MS-DOS or some variation there of (i.e. 4DOS, FreeDOS,etc.) What would I need to do to make the mobo read the rom? What kind of (ee)prom whold be best for this idea? I have had a fair amout of experience using various PICs and other types of roms before. Any help would be greatly apreciated! Thank you!

 

[cbarn24050]

Hi, this is not a good idea, pc motherboards don't work very well outside the pc. You can get a solid state disk that would do what you need. A better approach would be to use a board made for the job or make your own.

 

[IRstuff]

There are literally dozens of PC-104 systems already designed for this specific purpose:

http://www.web-tronics.com/oemprojsinbo.html

TTFN

 

[nbucska]

Check out <

http://www.bagotrinix.com>

's DOS STAMP ( $139.-) or
<

http://www.jkmicro.com>'s

$69 -- Both are PC compatible.


<nbucska@pcperipherals.com>

 

[MonkeyX]

WOW!!! Thank you all!!! I have been looking at the links you gave me. I would have to say that the boards IRStuff and nbucska pointed out are not only much smaller but are much (and I mean MUCH!!!) more efficient. The power consumption is far less than that of a conventional mobo. As for the solid state disk drives... would be wonderfull but a bit to expesive for a project the dog may accidentaly chew up! LOL Plus using one of the old 486/ P1 mobos I have lying around would be quite nice.

The only problem I have with the single board/ chip computers are the lack of expantion ports. Most of my programming knowledge had to do with working with ISA slots and thing like the serial/parallel ports in DOS. But I now have a few great ideas to think about.

Thank you again and any more advice will still be appreciated!

 

[nbucska]

Hi X:
both modules have direct access to some 8 bit ports: let's call them A=addr and D=data. Both A and D are addresses
between 0x0000 and 0xFFFF depending on where you map them.
In C:
outbyte(A, address) /*an address 0 to 255 used to select I/O channel */
outbyte(D,databyt) /* output byte OR for input: */
ivar=inbyte(D)

That is all.

<nbucska@pcperipherals.com>

 

[automatic2]

With the minimized PC board on your robot, use your system bios to boot up to your rom extension. Within your rom extension, run a routine that will configure a comm port (IR might be the ticket), load a block of code, then execute it. Your transmitting computer will house your code, provide development tools etc. Approach it so that the code loaded into the mobo, once acceptable in performance, will be burned to rom and reside as a rom boot extension. The thing I like about this approach is that minimal programming is required to bring your mobo to attention, and you have all the flexibility of software development. If you look back to a PCxt, you'll see that rom extension socket sitting there waiting to be used. Using an eeprom is easy and can be programmed on a breadboard.