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Linux on a FlashCard: home project
Juggle writes
about "a handy build it yourself interface for using
Compact Flash cards. The
website even includes instructions on booting Linux off
a Compact Flash card! This might be useful for car computers",
or webpad-like
consumer devices.
Now, if I could connect it to a HDD and my car-stereo I'd have a cheap and easy MP3-player...
Don't get me wrong: the TAPR board may be useful, but there are other choices, and you may not need the board at all.
Well, I may have emerged from the protoplasmic gook of a 6 month fire drill, thanks to a gentleman named Laurent Alacoque who sent me a link to the place where NEC distributes its documents on the vr4111, the processor in my *Wince* based everex. This boot disk thingie may help also. The site is at http://server1.hypermart.net/da rkharlequin/lda.html, and I will be updating it shortly, as soon as I verify that I can get out of user mode with this processor.
.......darkharlequin
It would make for a kick ass linux router (or 10/100 switch, or a firewall etc..) , running on Intel hardware, just a floppy 64M DIMM, A 8M or 16M flash card, and few 10/100 NICS, Serial card or what have you.
Checkout Watchgaurd's website, they make decent firewalls and guess what lies underneath that red shell of a case? A couple 10/100 NICS a Cyrix CPU, 16 megs ram, on an ASUS mobo, running a linux kernel. It uses a HD to boot.
Does that PCMCIA to IDE adapterstrike anyone as being extremely overpriced? There were nothing but the connections and some resisters. I recently saw a compact IDE to IDE adapter with as many components for $6.50. What is the deal?
Check out this Motorola all-in-one NLX board with a built-in bootable flash disk. It's featured in a series of articles in Circuit Cellar Magazine right now on Embedded RT-Linux.
t s/overview.html?[prodid=NLXP55
http://www.circuitcellar.com/TOC-frame.htm
http://www.mcg.mot.com/WebOS/omf/GSS/MCG/produc
You only have to look as far as yesterday to find a harddrive for the thing. you should be able to use one of those microdrives from IBM with this.
How many times can you write to these things???
My digital camera docs said they can be used "thousands of times" which is a lot for photo's but nothing if you are using it for swap space.....
Adtron's fits in a drive bay.
How about a Texas Micro Pentium single board computer with CompactFlash?
Here is a CF-to-IDE converter for mounting on a PC/104 stack. $150.
And here are three more from Advantech including an IDE CompactFlash module.
M-Systems also has IDE CompactFlash disks.
Anyone know if the following are OS dependent?
Instead of an ISA IDE/FD card, this PC Card/FD card. Or this 4-card PC Card ISA card.
Keep in mind that flash can only be written to 300,000 times or so. Avoid swapping to it, and probably best to not update file access times ("atime").
I'd be interested in knowing where you saw a CompactFlash to IDE adapter for $6.50. Can you give me an URL/Address/Phone # anything please !
bruno.schwander@technologist.com
Gumber sez: If you are going to have a HDD why bother with Flash?
The main reason to use flash over ls-120 is that the flash is solid state. in some environs this is very nessecary - (i.e. in near freezing temps, the plastic on you ls-120s would most likely crack) - and this is good for, say booting linux and running a dos drive to hold mp3's - that way there is no need to fsck anything, and the dos drive can have a little swap on it as well...
The IBM microdisk thing got me wondering. They say it's a "CF-II", but I can't find any information about CF-II on the Compact Flash web site. Does anybody know if I can put one of these things in my camera, which takes regular CF?
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
Why does everyone assume that by putting OS X in object Y that OS X automatically control's Y's vital functions?
When the time comes to computerize the interface with an object's critical operations, a suitable OS/application suite will be developed that will be ideal for the situation.
I've been checking out the Linux Router Project and my cheesy 1.44MB floppy lets me boot and do some simple stuff but not much else. The ls-120 superdisk from Imation and Maxell seem to be the best storage solution if you consider the price.
It would probably cost over $200 to do something similar with these flash cards. Thanks, but no thanks. Does anyone have a compelling reason to consider these flash cards over normal ls-120s disks?
Those of us with IBM PC110s have been doing this for years!
How many people would die if our cars were Unix
/dev/steeringwheel unusable.
based? I believe we would be reading titles like
this:
A pile up on 101 north due to a glitch in
in Linux/Dodge with CDE. Screen froze due
to a color handling bug in dtwm, which in
turn has rendered
15 have died in the accident. Relatives are
collecting money to put a contract on RedHat CEO's head.
The accident could have been avoided if the
driver managed to type in "init 6" on time.
Ford is pointing out that their car are
much safer because Solaris/Ford is more
mature and in case of a trouble, it's enough
to press Stop-A on the car console and it will
reboot itself on the fly.
I think I'll buy a horse if that ever happens.
They should work on compact 640x480 LCD displays and portable PC power supplies. People could start building Handheld/wearable PC's at home. We have the matchbox sized motherboards... Just need to shrink other components.
Microsoft aggravates my tourettes syndrome.
However, you could do the same while "fiddling with" a
CD player. Think before you post. This is a car stereo
controlled my Linux. Not a car controlled by Linux. I do
not see the "danger".
Maybe someone could point it out for me.
010110000010110101010100011110010111000001100101
Lots of embedded 'biscuit tin' boards now have a net boot option that you can blow into the main flash bios, e.g. http://www.aaeon.com/html/pcm5890.htm also http://www.advantech-usa.com /epc/products/pcm5862E.htm
There is a problem that these images are usually OS and chipset specific, but the netboot (http://www.han.de/~gero/netboot/) package by Gero Kuhlmann may provide a route forward if a way can be found to blow a netboot image into the flash.
The advantage would be 'cloned' hardware with no extra parts at all. You could have a rack full of these things booting from a central bootserver.
Interestingly the netboot package contains instructions for building a FlashCard that could be used in any PC.
I've had a linux box in my car and I've yet to crash. It all comes down to how you design the thing, methinks.
I hate dragging easily-scratched CDs around. Easy to brake, and hard to switch while the car is in motion. So I built a Linux box using older, and somewhat more sturdy hardware to play MP3s. As far as software goes, I just hacked something to gether that *said what I wanted to know* using a text-to-speech program. With one button functions on an old milspec laptop I could keep in my car without worrying about it freezing over, it's somewhat easier to use than my CD player, or frankly, my car radio.
Does anyone know if there's such a board for the DiskOnChip flash memory? Isn't the DiskOnChip cheaper than the Sandisk-style flash cards? It would be nice to have a board like this to hook up to the ide cable since my motherboard doesn't have a socket for the DiskOnChip chip.
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