Old 486 Board for ECU??

[Randall]

Chad wrote :
>
> Every BIOS I have ever dealt with won't boot without a hard
> drive.  It
> needs to pass control to some sort of boot sector, usually
> present on the
> hard drive.  I remember seeing an industrial PC that used
> SRAM in place of
> a hard drive.  If a person could use that, you wouldn't need
> to load a bin
> from a floppy drive, just keep the data on the RAM "hard
> drive".  I think
> even a floppy drive would not be able to handle the intensity
> of automotive
> conditions for very long.

A supported boot device is definitely required, but most BIOSes will boot
from floppy without a hard drive present.  And, since presumably the floppy
would only load the heads before you could start the car, the mechanical
part would probably hold up reasonably well, at least well enough for some
extended testing.  Since the heads don't 'fly', floppy drives are relatively
tolerant of shock and vibration.  IMO the biggest problem is likely to be
temperature non-operating, which will be a problem for the entire PC, not
just the floppy drive.  Laptop hard drives are also pretty rugged.

One boot solution is a memory device (eg Flash) that emulates a floppy or
hard drive.  These are available commercially from the industrial PC
suppliers.  Or, it shouldn't be too hard to hack the BIOS boot code to
install your own.  There is a standard protocol where an "extended BIOS" (eg
smart video board) can get control during the startup process, and install
itself as a boot device.

Randall

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