Oliver Xymoron wrote:
> 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.
>
> --
The Advantek board will ( read should ) boot, it looks like a standard
floppy ( only faster ). However it is my experience that to boot in the
manner you suggest ( and if your target board has an IDE interface ) you will
find a 4M flash disk from Sandisk to be not only cheaper, smaller but with
the advantages as stated by Mr Oxy above. ( and if you need to expand in the
future you have an easy upgrade path that is not afforded by the Advantek
board ).
