poirot@aio.jsc.nasa.gov (Daniel Poirot) (10/05/90)
Now that 8088 motherboards are as cheap as they are, I would like to replace some ageing micro-controllers with a PC motherboard. With up to eight slots on some of these boards, this would allow me to customize the controller by adding standard PC expansion boards. Also, programming in C and testing in a DOS host would be very attractive. I would like to be able to run in a disk-free configuration for several data-gathering points in the lab. Several of the manufacturors of EPROM boards for the PC advertise the capability of running DOS in ROM. I am interested in a copy of the ROM image if one is available. Has anyone had any experience with putting DOS in ROM? I understand Radio Shack, Grid and Digital Research all use some sort of DOS in ROM. Also, I have a locator program from Dr. Dobbs Journal that is supposed to convert .EXE files into a ROM image. The article was aimed at a BIOS-only system without DOS. This would be O.K. but would defeat the host-based testing capability. Please reply by E-Mail as I will be out of the office for the next few days. Responses will be summarized and posted if there is sufficent interest. Thanks Daniel Poirot poirot@aio.jsc.nasa.gov Lockheed C07A "The mind is a terrable thing." 2400 NASA Rd. 1 tel: (713)483-2426 Houston, TX 77058 fax: (713)483-6120
psfales@cbnewsc.att.com (Peter Fales) (10/07/90)
In article <687@aio.jsc.nasa.gov>, poirot@aio.jsc.nasa.gov (Daniel Poirot) writes: > Several of the manufacturors of EPROM boards for the PC advertise the > capability of running DOS in ROM. I am interested in a copy of the ROM > image if one is available. > > Has anyone had any experience with putting DOS in ROM? I understand > Radio Shack, Grid and Digital Research all use some sort of DOS in > ROM. I have been experimenting recently with putting DOS in ROM in order to improve the performance of my floppy disk only laptop machine (a Sharp PC-4501). After disassembling a few key parts of the boot sector and IO.SYS, it did not turn out to be too difficult. The laptop BIOS helped out quite a bit by treating the ROM card as a third floppy device. Creating the ROM image was just a matter of putting DOS, COMMAND.COM, CONFIG.SYS, AUTOEXEC.BAT, and all my standard utilities on a floppy disk, then simply copying that disk image byte for byte into a series of EPROMS. I did have to patch a few bytes to get the system to boot from a floppy drive other than A:, but it seems to be working quite well. I would be interested in knowing the ROM cards for standard PCs work. I can't imagine how one would boot from the ROM card without creating a new BIOS or BIOS extensions. Once booted an installable device driver could get access to the ROM device. -- Peter Fales AT&T, Room 5B-420 N9IYJ 2000 N. Naperville Rd. UUCP: ...att!ihlpb!psfales Naperville, IL 60566 Domain: psfales@ihlpb.att.com work: (708) 979-8031