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[Todd King]

  <<<From: Krister Wikstrom <kwi at mamma.icl.fi> Date: Fri, 4 Oct 1996 09:58:00 
  +0200 Subject: Using PC HW
  A little warning about using normal consumer PC HW - it seems, that most of 
  the late motherboards are very  >>>
  
  The motherboard mentioned was a 386 I believe(?)...
  
  <<<Late motherboards also contain chipsets with tons of registers to set 
  before   >>>
  
  Maybe some registers but not all need to be addressed before the board can be 
  used. I assume the 386 mb is an EISA board at best. If you want to use that 
  bus it's no problem to initialize, all the info is readily available about 
  EISA (or ISA) spec, any chips that might be used, ect. Just visit the relevant 
  web pages pretty much. Also Mindshare books on EISA, ISA, whatever are pretty 
  good, "The Indespensible PC Hardware Book" is good, etc. It is very do-able; 
  plenty of other folks have.
  
  <<<...don't think it's
  easy to replace the BIOS with your own code. There are detailed manuals about 
  >>>
  
  Well the BIOS is just code written by a human like yourself, don't be scared 
  of it. This is the *DIY*_EFI list after all, right? I assume the intent is to 
  use some of the mb hardware for EFI control, not to attempt to write your own 
  IBM PC compatible BIOS. The mb hardware does not need to be all set up for PC 
  compatibility here, just get the timers going, p-port going, etc. Forget about 
  the PC word and concentrate on the hardware usage.
  
  <<<...One other problem could also happen with some motherboards - I'm not 
  sure if it is possible to disable the keyboard
  on all boards. If you don't have the keyboard connected, you might end up with 
  BIOS saying "keyboard error, press F1 to continue" etc. (very stupid message 
  anyway).   >>>
  
  The point is that we aren't talking about integrating a PC into the car, just 
  using some of the mb hardware for EFI control. If you have your own code in 
  there you won't see someone elses messages about keyboards, right?  For 
  development work you can use the mb connected in a PC system but when done 
  just desolder the PROM and install a socket for your own PROM. You've just 
  created your own Eval board. The mb hardware won't mind a bit, I assure you 
  :-) BTW, I have had both my laptop and my big, bulky old PC in my car at 
  various times for development efforts, powered by an old Radio Shack power 
  inverter. Not to mention a clunky old Dumont o'scope, dot matrix printer, 
  etc... For the last year+ I've been using a full blown 6811 EVM in the car for 
  various reasons; it was not necessarily intended for that either but there it 
  lays, connected with spaghetti wiring to the ECM. Hey, if you want to put mb 
  hardware to work for you go for it, IMHO!
  
  Todd  Todd_King at ccm.co.intel.com