Booting from a PCMCIA hard disk

I have recently downloaded QNXRTP, which we are planning to use in a
small robotic platform. We will have a PC104 stack with several IO
cards.

In earlier versions of the same robot, I had the luxury of a big hard
disk where I did all the development, compilation and debugging. In
this version, I will have a 64Mb CompactFlash card and most likely a
PCMCIA slot with a 640Mb hard disk in it.

The ideal sitation would be to be able to boot from the PCMCIA disk,
have all the development facilities and debuggers in there, and use
the CompactFlash card as my target for the final version. So, for full
tests of the system, I would take the PCMCIA hard disk out, boot from
the flash and test my image etc.

Does anybody know whether I can do that? Can I boot QNX from the
PCMCIA hard disk? or the Flash card, for that matter?

Or, is this configuration totally meaningless and I should go with
some other scheme?


Thanks for the help.

  • Uluc.

Uluc Saranli wrote:

I have recently downloaded QNXRTP, which we are planning to use in a
small robotic platform. We will have a PC104 stack with several IO
cards.

In earlier versions of the same robot, I had the luxury of a big hard
disk where I did all the development, compilation and debugging. In
this version, I will have a 64Mb CompactFlash card and most likely a
PCMCIA slot with a 640Mb hard disk in it.

The ideal sitation would be to be able to boot from the PCMCIA disk,
have all the development facilities and debuggers in there, and use
the CompactFlash card as my target for the final version. So, for full
tests of the system, I would take the PCMCIA hard disk out, boot from
the flash and test my image etc.

Does anybody know whether I can do that? Can I boot QNX from the
PCMCIA hard disk? or the Flash card, for that matter?

Can your BIOS boot from PCMCIA. If not, QNX will not boot from it.
If it will, then it may. Then there will be the issue of PCCARD
driver support-what chipset your PB will be using…
Suppose you fake it ny booting from FD, loading the approp. drivers
and then continuing the boot on the PCMCIA.
The CF may be sitting on the IDE i/f anyway, so you may not have
a problem there. Booting from the CF may be the better way to go.

Or, is this configuration totally meaningless and I should go with
some other scheme?