From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Paul Nasrat Subject: Re: thanks from elks newbie...!! Date: Tue, 30 Jul 2002 09:17:48 +0100 Sender: linux-8086-owner@vger.kernel.org Message-ID: <20020730081748.GB24638@raq465.uk2net.com> References: <20020727093759.GD32090@raq465.uk2net.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Return-path: Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: List-Id: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: Seemanta Dutta 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