Old 486 Board for ECU??

[Chad]

Oops.  Spoke before I thought.  I've spent so much time trying to get 
Windows to do what I want with a hard drive that I forgot it was an option 
to disable it.  We have a couple of computers in our dyno rooms with floppy 
drives that consistently corrupt floppy disks just because of the junk that 
floats around in the air out there.  These same conditions exist under that 
dash of a car, so that's my basis for saying that a floppy drive would 
eventually fail (most likely when you're on a road trip in the middle of 
Alaska with no computer store for 500 miles).



>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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