Hi, On 7/25/07, Sharad Birmiwal <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I probably didn't mention this but I was looking for a cheap board. I wasn't > going to go out of the way to pay much for a board.
Ok. > I wanted to > write dedicated applications, program the flash, and execute. If this is what you really want to do then, you do need to get flash-based development boards. And to get a reasonable good kit, you need to invest on it. It is not your choice or my choice, but, that is the way it is in India, currently. > Any how, if you > are suggesting using pentiums (which, as far as I understand, you are), what > can I do with them (insert suggestings here)? Try to build your own: * PCI subsystem, and its drivers. * IDE drivers, and filesystems on IDE/ATA. * SCSI subsystem. * USB stack on PCI subsystem. * Networking stack, and drivers. These are subsystems, and can be written as firmware. Try to build demo examples/scenarios with the above. You can learn a lot about firmware/device driver programming on x86 by implementing these. > I don't want to boot linux on > it. And I also don't want to boot any other OS Ok. Accepted. You might also want to look at the LinuxBIOS project: http://linuxbios.org/Welcome_to_LinuxBIOS > Not sure if this is the right path to take, as I said, I want to be a > beginner, and I appreciate all advice. I am happy that you are asking questions. > Hands on experience? It depends on what you intend to do with the kit. What is meant by "hands-on" is getting to understand the hardware, and get real programming experience on the hardware. As a student interested into embedded, if you were given a boot-up code, and were asked to write a minimal PCI sub-system, you will go ahead and read the PCI specification, understand its existing implementation, and try to write/strip down existing GPLed version and test it. And when you complete the task, you would have known in-and-out of how PCI works. This ability to seek, learn and acquire knowledge is called education. SK -- Shakthi Kannan http://www.shakthimaan.com _______________________________________________ ilugd mailinglist -- ilugd@lists.linux-delhi.org http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd Next Event: http://freed.in - September 28-29, 2007 Archives at: http://news.gmane.org/gmane.user-groups.linux.delhi http://www.mail-archive.com/ilugd@lists.linux-delhi.org/
