Ampro CoreModule PC/104 system

I’m trying to start up an Ampro CoreModule 400 PC/104 system
with QNX. This runs a PC-type BIOS, and theoretically can
run most PC OSs. Ours right now has only the CPU
board and a CD-ROM drive; no disk-on-chip or flash memory.
It does have a VGA driver, so we plugged in a display and
keyboard, and were able to talk to the BIOS’s setup program.

The objective right now is to get it to boot.

I’ve built a “hello world” boot CD; it has the minimum
stuff needed to boot the QNX kernel and print “Hello, world”.

The machine will start up, and it’s possible to talk to the
BIOS. At first, the BIOS wouldn’t recognize the CD-ROM
drive, but when I set IDE device 0 to be a CD-ROM drive,
it started recognizing the CD-ROM. The BIOS prints
“Looking for El Torito boot image … Boot image found”,
and then nothing, not even the usual QNX boot loader messages.

Tried a QNX 6.21NC boot CD, just to see what would happen.
That didn’t work either.

My question is whether “bios-boot” has any built-in
assumptions I need to know about. For example, the way
this system is currently configured, the CD-ROM drive
is IDE device 0, a master, and is drive “C:”. Is
that something the boot loader can handle?

John Nagle
Team Overbot

It turns out that you have to configure the BIOS so that
the CD-ROM doesn’t get a drive letter, then tell it to boot
from CD-ROM anyway. Runs QNX just fine.

For some wierd reason, when running from CD-ROM,
building the help index takes five minutes. Yes, it’s
only a 166MHz machine, but I suspect there’s something
configured incorrectly.

John Nagle

John Nagle wrote:

I’m trying to start up an Ampro CoreModule 400 PC/104 system
with QNX. This runs a PC-type BIOS, and theoretically can
run most PC OSs. Ours right now has only the CPU
board and a CD-ROM drive; no disk-on-chip or flash memory.
It does have a VGA driver, so we plugged in a display and
keyboard, and were able to talk to the BIOS’s setup program.

The objective right now is to get it to boot.

I’ve built a “hello world” boot CD; it has the minimum
stuff needed to boot the QNX kernel and print “Hello, world”.

The machine will start up, and it’s possible to talk to the
BIOS. At first, the BIOS wouldn’t recognize the CD-ROM
drive, but when I set IDE device 0 to be a CD-ROM drive,
it started recognizing the CD-ROM. The BIOS prints
“Looking for El Torito boot image … Boot image found”,
and then nothing, not even the usual QNX boot loader messages.

Tried a QNX 6.21NC boot CD, just to see what would happen.
That didn’t work either.

My question is whether “bios-boot” has any built-in
assumptions I need to know about. For example, the way
this system is currently configured, the CD-ROM drive
is IDE device 0, a master, and is drive “C:”. Is
that something the boot loader can handle?

John Nagle
Team Overbot

It really is that slow. The Ampro CoreModule 400
benchmarks at 26,178 dhrystones/second.

In comparison, a midrange desktop machine (AMD
at 1.6GHz) benchmarks at 1,666,666 dhrystones/second.
That’s 63:1, even though the clock rates are only
13:1. Does the architecture make that much of a difference?
Probably.

John Nagle wrote:

For some wierd reason, when running from CD-ROM,
building the help index takes five minutes. Yes, it’s
only a 166MHz machine, but I suspect there’s something
configured incorrectly.

John Nagle

Hi John,

We have an Ampro CoreModule, and it boots with the CD just fine. Maybe
there is something wrong with the bios. My understanding is that the Core
module comes with flash memory by default (I could be wrong on this) as a
portion of it is used to hold the BIOS. If it gets corrupt, it may cause
you problems, but you can restore it. Talk to Ampro Tech support, they’ve
been really good when we’ve had difficulties.

Can you boot any other kind of CD (Windows or some Linux distribution?).

Kevin

“John Nagle” <nagle@downside.com> wrote in message
news:bgspdl$njf$1@inn.qnx.com

I’m trying to start up an Ampro CoreModule 400 PC/104 system
with QNX. This runs a PC-type BIOS, and theoretically can
run most PC OSs. Ours right now has only the CPU
board and a CD-ROM drive; no disk-on-chip or flash memory.
It does have a VGA driver, so we plugged in a display and
keyboard, and were able to talk to the BIOS’s setup program.

The objective right now is to get it to boot.

I’ve built a “hello world” boot CD; it has the minimum
stuff needed to boot the QNX kernel and print “Hello, world”.

The machine will start up, and it’s possible to talk to the
BIOS. At first, the BIOS wouldn’t recognize the CD-ROM
drive, but when I set IDE device 0 to be a CD-ROM drive,
it started recognizing the CD-ROM. The BIOS prints
“Looking for El Torito boot image … Boot image found”,
and then nothing, not even the usual QNX boot loader messages.

Tried a QNX 6.21NC boot CD, just to see what would happen.
That didn’t work either.

My question is whether “bios-boot” has any built-in
assumptions I need to know about. For example, the way
this system is currently configured, the CD-ROM drive
is IDE device 0, a master, and is drive “C:”. Is
that something the boot loader can handle?

John Nagle
Team Overbot

Kevin Stallard wrote:

Hi John,

We have an Ampro CoreModule, and it boots with the CD just fine. Maybe
there is something wrong with the bios.

Yes, the trick (documented in the Ampro manual, but not the Quick Start
guide) is that the CD-ROM drive must not be assigned a drive letter, but
CDROM must appear in the boot order.

More useful Ampro CoreModule 400 info:

  • The QNX Board Support Kit isn’t actually shipping yet.
    But the thing is so PC-like that you barely need it.
    We’re not sure about disk-on-chip or flash support under QNX
    yet, though; haven’t tried those.

  • This is a slower machine than one might expect for
    something with a 133MHz clock. It
    benchmarks at 23K Dhrystones/sec. In comparison, a
    midrange desktop (AMD K6, 1.6GHz) benchmarks at
    1,666K Dhrystones/sec.

  • QNX 6.2.1NC will boot and run in CD-only mode.sluggishly.
    It will come up on a network and talk to the Internet with
    Voyager, out of the box. It takes three
    minutes to get through “building helpviewer database”,
    so you don’t want to do this much. But it’s enough to
    get you to the point where you can FTP stuff over easily.

  • On one occasion, hot-plugging an Ethernet cable crashed
    the machine.


    John Nagle