Boot loading

[gumby at zembu.com (D. V. Henkel-Wallace)]

At 11:01 14-05-99 -0700, erik.ivanenko wrote:
>Ian Lance Taylor wrote:
> > The flash disk was formatted as a DOS disk, read as a hard drive by
> > the BIOS.  I was able to use GRUB to install itself to boot
> > automatically on the flash disk, and to install a menu which
> > immediately loaded the RTEMS app.  Then I loaded the RTEMS app.  When
> > I switch it on, the RTEMS app runs.  I can use the floppy drive to
> > boot something different, like FreeDOS which I can use to update the
> > hard drive.
>
>Yes this is perfect.  It is exactly what I had in mind, except that I'd like
>to use Linux  w/ ISA bus extension to pc104 outside the box to update the
>Flash disk, to load very large images.   Is max GRUB image size is actually
>16Mb?  I suppose any flash disk that is INT 13 compatible works?   Which
>flash disk did you use?

We used the DiskOnChip from M-systems.  They're pretty popular with the 
PC/104 vendors.

They're a lot more expensive than the equivalent amount of plain flash.

It's been very reliable, but we haven't subjected it to huge numbers of 
write cycles.  They buy their flash from Toshiba so I don't have any 
concerns about the quality.