On Thu, Jul 01, 2004 at 09:35:03PM +0600, Ian Zagorskih wrote:
 [...]
> > I was just noticing that the price of 256MB solid-state non-volatile
> > memory took anotherp plunge (down to about $50).  I was thinking about
> > the notion of putting a NetBSD install on one of those things.  (This is
> > fairly idle, since I don't really have a need for such a toy.  It'd really
> > be a waste of $50 for me right now.)
> >
> > Then it hit me: A few years ago, a single CD-ROM had a multi-boot CD
> > that would install NetBSD on any of several platforms.  Maybe we are
> > close to a single memory card being able to boot multiple hardware
 [...]
> 
> ATM i already have NetBSD fine booting and working from USB Flash Disk. It
> eats about 4Mb of total 64Mb. There's no problem to make an installation
> distro for such disks. So you'r not alone thinking about NetBSD on solid
> state disks :)

Ah.  Now, can you boot multiple CPUs/archs from one flash disk?  (^&

(The problem that I don't know about solving is simply getting
different boot blocks to work.  CD's apparently have a convention
for this, but I assume that solid state disks do not look like CDs,
even if write-protected and bootable, so...there remains a problem.)


Re. Ben's idea: Of course, rechargable batteries eventually still need to
be replaced.  But that may be better than having to either regard the
system as read-only or else having to replace the memory.  I don't know
how much power it takes to keep memory "live".  Maybe you could keep a
substantial amount of memory "live" on something like a watch battery
(or a couple in series; dunno what the voltage is on a watch battery;
(^&).

If the thing lasts long enough and can give you a warning about low
power (or can be queried when plugged in), "rechargable" may not be
necessary.  Just change the batteries while the thing is plugged in.
(Or dump the memory, swap batteries, and reload memory.)

Since the batteries wouldn't need to make it operate when not plugged
in, and I assume it can get sufficient power from (say) a USB plugin
for full operation, I'd think you'd get good lifetimes out of the
batteries.


-- 
  "I probably don't know what I'm talking about."  http://www.olib.org/~rkr/