[ColorForth] Chuck's Posts on USB and Network

[Dirk Harms-Merbitz <dirk@xxxxxxxxx>]

CD-R/W would be good. We use it for custom Linux CD-ROMs. Works well.
Chuck, its on the CD that you have from us.

El Torrito harddisk emulation will not work on many BIOSes. syslinux has
an assembly language program called ISOLINUX that boots of CD-ROM's in
native mode.

Also, while at it, hardware assumptions should be updated to reflect
current hardware. Many laptops now have 512MB RAM and 1600x1200 LCDs.

Dirk

---

http://freshmeat.net/releases/86270/

About: SYSLINUX is a boot loader for the Linux operating system which
operates off of MS-DOS floppies. It is intended to simplify first-time
installation of Linux, rescue disks, and other uses for boot floppies. A
SYSLINUX floppy can be manipulated using standard MS-DOS (or any other
OS that can access an MS-DOS filesystem) tools once it has been created,
and requires only a ~ 8K DOS program or ~ 16K Linux program to create it
in the first place. It also includes PXELINUX, a program to boot off a
network server using a boot PROM compatible with the Intel PXE
(Pre-Execution Environment) specification, ISOLINUX, a program to boot
off ISO 9660 CD-ROMs in native mode, and MEMDISK, a tool to boot legacy
operating systems (e.g. DOS) using a Linux boot loader regardless of
medium.

On Thu, Jul 18, 2002 at 04:36:42PM -0400, Kurt B. Kaiser wrote:
> "Chuck Moore" <chipchuck@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
> 
> > But you can't boot from USB flash. I think the time has come to use
> > CD-R/W and forget floppy.
> 
> Apparently the newer BIOSs can, but it's certainly not universal.  The
> industry is in transition.  Eventually everything local will be USB (or AGP).  
> 
> I just read a posting where a guy was having problems accessing a
> IDE CD-R/W using Debian Linux.  So no panacea, but maybe less problematic
> than a floppy on newer systems.  
> 
> My understanding is that you use PCs because they're cheap and
> universal.  But for your own work you consider them a stopgap measure
> until Forth chip based HW is available.  Why not use as much of the
> BIOS as possible to access some mass storage to get a stable Forth
> kernel loaded?  Then use that to take over the system and access the
> USB mass storage and the network directly for development?
> 
> If you look at the Linux drivers you'll be struck by the complexity
> needed to support all the different HW configurations.  You want to
> support as few interfaces as possible, and preferably via the
> manufacturer-supplied compatibility layers.  (Life is too short to
> re-write the compatibility layers.)
> 
> We are all getting our Forth off the net.  Very few of us are keying
> it in or buying it on floppies.  So we are bootstrapping simple
> systems from a very complex ones.  Since few of us want to risk
> corrupting the complex system by running developmental ColorForth on
> it, the problem reduces to how to get the ColorForth image into the
> development system.  It's not quite the same as embedded development,
> because Forth is self hosting once you get it installed, so a
> continuous serial link is not necessary.
> 
> Floppies should be a universal way to do this on systems of widely
> varying age, but there seem to be more problems than expected with the
> current bootstrap method.  A lot of time is being spent on this.
> 
> Maybe, as previously suggested by Slicker and Loveall, flat real mode
> is the answer, since you don't care about interprocess protection and
> therefore you don't really need protected mode, just a big, flat
> address space.
> 
> Well, just my (inflated) two cents. 
> 
> Regards, KBK
> ------------------------
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