Boot Images and SBC

Hello,

I’m using a computer to develop programs, use photon and so on…
The system is designed to run in a SBC (Single-Board Computer) with a disk-on-chip 32MB.

My question is, what is the best way to “put” the image on the SBC?
I mean, today I’m doing a very stupid thing like putting the HD (from the development computer) in the SBC, booting, dinit to the disk-on-chip, unplug the HD, changing boot parameters of SBC, booting and then testing the software.

What’s the right way to “upload” the image directly to the SBC and make the tests without need to do all this?

I’m using QNX6.1

Any help?

Doesn’t the SBC have an ethernet or serial port you can use to upload your program?

Yes. Both!

I just don’t know how to upload! I mean, how can I upload the image and write it on the disk-on-chip? To upload I’ll need all services (TCP/IP, devc-ser, etc) ?

I’m looking for an article, any information on how to upload the image, initialize the disk and then test working.

The solution I’m looking is something like :
1 - build the image on the development computer.
2 - upload to SBC and initialize the disk.
3 - Test the image on SBC!

Obs : The disk-on-chip is the only media disk (HD) I have on SBC!

I’m thinking about putting a normal HD on SBC with all QNX services (normal installarion), upload the image to this HD, then from SBC I’ll initialize the disk-on-chip using the image uploaded (creating a script to do it), rebooting the SBC, changing the boot sequence on BIOS and then test the image.
Is a lot of hand-work don’t you think?

I want to know how you (qnx community) do this!

Attaching a HD is probably the best way to go (if you don’t have any other media to boot from).

If the bios will let you boot off anything other than the HD device, you could use the other media. If it boots off floppy or CD, you create a boot image for it and boot off that device. If it boots over serial or network, you can use the IDE to supply the image through those connections(or a tftp server/serial program if you don’t have the IDE).

In fact unless you have a photon app, you can probably put your whole app, plus boot image on a floppy and use that until you are finished debugging it, etc…

My experience has shown that the best approach is to create a target in your build environment for a install image. Even before you have something to install. Then as the project progresses, you add to the install target. At any time you want to test, you build the install image and place it on the target. This may seem like overkill, but it has always paid off in the end for me.

Rick…