On Tue, 3 Nov 1998, Steve Chandler wrote:
>
> I have a question for anyone of you who may be using the Advantech 4862.
> I understand you can use a Flash or EPROM as a floppy. Is this supported
> by the BIOS and therefore require no drivers? It actually looks just
> like a floppy?
>
> One more question - Does the little biscuit board from them (4823 I
> think) have this feature as well?
>
> We are building an embedded unit and it would be very cool to have
> simple kernel in an EPROM with network support so we can boot it up into
> an "integration mode" and have it load the hard drive with the actual
> software over the network. Our boxes will not have floppies and I would
> hate to have to open up each one, install a floppy drive, install the
> software, remove the floppy drive, screw the box back together and pray
> that I don't have to go through this again. Especially since I'm talking
> about possibly hundreds of these things.
If it has a hard drive, you should just boot off of it. Install the
software by using dd(1) to copy a complete disk image onto the drive
before putting the drive in. No fdisk, etc., required. Not substantially
harder than burning an EPROM and quite a bit more efficient.
--
"Love the dolphins," she advised him. "Write by W.A.S.T.E.."
