Auto-boot from disk (uIEC)
in [Commodore]
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From: BruceMcF on 7 May 2008 10:07 On May 7, 2:27 am, christianlott1 <christianlo...(a)yahoo.com> wrote: > On May 7, 12:40 am, BruceMcF <agil...(a)netscape.net> wrote: > > But surely if you can program an EPROM, that's easier than building a > > board to allow in-circuit programming of a parallel Flash RAM. > The scenario is still valid. There may be people who would like their > new uIEC hard drive to autoboot. Any replacement ROM that can autoboot a 1541 or 1571 can autoboot a uIEC. > A kernal rom socketed board that pulls in the latest firmware from the > hd at boot would be ideal. I don't understand why this is the ideal. An ISP programmable socketed board that is flashed with a utility program means that you don't have to have the firmware present in whatever appears to be the boot disk at the time. And it can use the stock uIEC ... simply store the utility program together with the cartridge files ... when you want to change the firmware, load, run, reset. To me, for the options involving cracking the case, that is the ideal. It can start with a known working firmware, has all the flexibility that anyone could need, will work with current target design for the uIEC, and allows an autoboot to work just as well with a 1541 without having to have firmware files on each 1541 disk that you want to autoboot. > It also doesn't hog a cart port. So the autoboot chip is designed so it does not interfere with anything else using the cartridge port. Then its not hogging the port.
From: christianlott1 on 7 May 2008 13:07
On May 7, 9:07 am, BruceMcF <agil...(a)netscape.net> wrote: > On May 7, 2:27 am, christianlott1 <christianlo...(a)yahoo.com> wrote: > > > On May 7, 12:40 am, BruceMcF <agil...(a)netscape.net> wrote: > > > But surely if you can program an EPROM, that's easier than building a > > > board to allow in-circuit programming of a parallel Flash RAM. > > The scenario is still valid. There may be people who would like their > > new uIEC hard drive to autoboot. > > Any replacement ROM that can autoboot a 1541 or 1571 can autoboot a > uIEC. > > > A kernal rom socketed board that pulls in the latest firmware from the > > hd at boot would be ideal. > > I don't understand why this is the ideal. An ISP programmable socketed > board that is flashed with a utility program means that you don't have > to have the firmware present in whatever appears to be the boot disk > at the time. And it can use the stock uIEC ... simply store the > utility program together with the cartridge files ... when you want to > change the firmware, load, run, reset. It's the ideal solution because it's automatic. You don't have to load the utility and program the rom. It does that for you if it sees a newer file in the /firmware directory. > To me, for the options involving cracking the case, that is the ideal. > It can start with a known working firmware, has all the flexibility > that anyone could need, will work with current target design for the > uIEC, and allows an autoboot to work just as well with a 1541 without > having to have firmware files on each 1541 disk that you want to > autoboot. That's not true. If you're using a real 1541 the 1541 doesn't have a spi port (not yet anyway). Since it can't load any updated firmware, it loads nothing at all, retaining the software already in the chip. > > It also doesn't hog a cart port. > > So the autoboot chip is designed so it does not interfere with > anything else using the cartridge port. Then its not hogging the port. I can't understand if you're arguing for or against the cart port solution. |