Old 486 Board for ECU??

[Mike from West Australia]

At 03:22 PM 28/4/2000 -0600, you wrote:
>
>>Take an old machine that companies are chucking out.(I've got a few
>>486's,early p100's etc..)  Rip out the hard drive,(the bit that  REALLY
>>won't like the harsh environment of the automotive world) and all other
>>sundries like a sound card(if your lucky!!), cd-rom etc...
>
>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.

Every - and I mean every 486 motherboard I have dealt with has boot
option from BIOS... ANd I have seen a bundle in last 5 years...

I also have never seen a Pentium that will not boot from floppy...



Rgds


Mike Massen

Pictures of site installation at Mendulong near Sipitang, Sabah (Malaysia)
Remote Area Power System   http://www.wantree.com.au/~erazmus

Vehicle modifications on GMH Turbo, twin tyres, possible 175Kw at wheels
Preliminary pictures at http://www.wantree.com.au/~erazmus/Twin_tyre_vehicle/

Editorial on twin-tyre opinion and good reference about tyres:-
http://www.geocities.com/MotorCity/2195/ttyreopinion.html

Ancient Sufi saying:
        "Should your God save you from adversity, choose another God"
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