Hello,
Currently I am running a Sandpoint System with a MPC8245 and QNX 6.1. To
boot the system I have to download the code to the Sandpoint system via the
serial port because the image it too large to fit into the 512K ROM.
Instead of downloading the code I would like to be able to boot the image
from the hard disk.
How can I get the system to recognize that the image in on the hard drive as
opposed to it waiting for the download through the serial port, or booting
directl from the ROM? What has to be modified in order to do this? I.E. the
build file, the IPL?
Also does the image need to be modified in any particular way? Do I just
jump to the starting location of the image on the hard drive? If so how can
I access the drive without the image starting and how do I know where the
image is located on the drive?
As a side note I am able to get the hard drive running when I download the
code through the serial port.
Thanks in advance,
Mike Toreno
Instead of downloading the code I would like to be able to boot the image
from the hard disk.
How can I get the system to recognize that the image in on the hard drive
as
opposed to it waiting for the download through the serial port, or booting
directl from the ROM? What has to be modified in order to do this? I.E.
the
build file, the IPL?
You’ll have to write IPL code which can initialize the HD, and start
clocking sectors/image off the disk into memory.
Also does the image need to be modified in any particular way? Do I just
jump to the starting location of the image on the hard drive? If so how
can
I access the drive without the image starting and how do I know where the
image is located on the drive?
The image itself should need to be modified (aside from adding drivers for a
disk you may want to use later), but you can’t just “jump” to the disk. You
need to have routines which can initialize the HD controller, and read
sectors from it into memory. The IPL code to do all this will have to be
either uploaded, or put into your ROM so it’s available when the core comes
up. The image on the drive is whereever you put it 
If you’re working
with a blank HD, then just stick the image at the start of the disk, or at
least at the start of a partition.
-Adam