Re: thanks from elks newbie...!!

[Paul Nasrat <pauln@truemesh.com>]

On Tue, Jul 30, 2002 at 12:47:27PM +0530, Seemanta Dutta wrote:
> 
> greetings to all the gurus...

Trust me we're not all gurus :)

> 
> i am a student of Electronics engg. going to undertake a project work in
> elks ...i want to embed elks in old computer mother boards, which are

OK, that's quite ambitious.
 
> 1. ok i have dev86, i also have an old 286 or 386 motherboard with the
> cpu....but how do i interface the rom or flash rom with it...in short..how
> do i make the system boot from my elks kernel?

Is it a PC?  If it is a 8x86 embedded board you may need to write
drivers:

Follow the thread here:

http://rainbow.cs.unipi.gr/linux-8086-list/2002/06/1815.html

To quote Alan Cox:

"The 80186 embedded devices are very un pc-like. So you neednew drivers 
A 186 PC ought to wrk fine "

If it is a pc I really recommend you try first off booting of a floppy.  You might want to look at the following locations for images:

Floppy boot images from elkscmd

http://rainbow.cs.unipi.gr/~harkal/ELKS/images/

EDE - for installing onto a hard drive.

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/neiluk/elks-distro/
ftp://ftp.linux.org.uk/pub/linux/8086/Distribution/

You can also build them from elkscmd, but check here for latest cvs
status.

> 2.so i have elksemu with me now...i can emulate my programs now..but is
> there any mechanism by way of which i can directly embed my programs into
> my board... like some hardware emulators or some software to directly send
> the code into the rom chip thru the com or parallel port??

umm, unsure - you may be able to do it via etherboot (a network boot
rom)

http://etherboot.sourceforge.net/doc/html/atnetboot-2.html

I've no idea about getting it embedded on standard pc architecture.

> 3. are all the developers of elks project using used old mother boards or
> do they use some specialised boards? frankly speaking is it really
> possible to embed elks into very old and used computer mother boards?

I'm using an old 8086 laptop and booting from floppy.  Others are using
osimilar systems. If you have a old computer motherboard, start by
building a system, then get it working on that, then look at ways of
embedding it.
 
> 4. is there any good documentation available for elks? i have tried

http://elks.sourceforge.net/faq/FAQ-English.html

The source is pretty small (cf the full linux kernel) so you may have
some joy there.

http://rainbow.cs.unipi.gr/linux-8086-list/ is searchable on google.

It really depends what you are looking for, you may want some x86 books
if you need lowlevel knowledge for writing embedded stuff, or just K&R
and lots of coffee for doing house keeping.


Paul