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Hi Matthew,

On 6 Aug 2004 at 23:04, Matthew Orgass <darkstar@city-net.com> spoke, thus:

> On 2004-08-06 mail@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com wrote:
> 
> > So, first of all, does or does it (hpcboot.exe - this device runs Windows
> > CE 2.12) not accept command line parameters?  If it doesn't then, unless
> > it automatically uses a specific kernel image and boots using a serial
> > console, or else reads aconfiguration file in a given location (perhaps
> > the same directory as hpcboot.exe itself), it will not be of any use - do
> > any of you have suggestions on how to boot this generic gzipped sysinst
> > kernel image on my device?
> 
>   I don't know if it has command line options, but it does read and write a
> configuration file (possibly with a hard coded list of directory names).
> With the auto boot option it should be possible to configure it to boot
> without additional user intervention.

Great!  Have you the spiffy details?  It would be much appreciated!

>   As I recall, the Casio machines have proprietary PCMCIA controllers; A CF
> card can be used if configured in CE, however insertion or removal and
> other cards will not work.  It is possible that Linux users have gotten the
> documentation or REd enough of the CE driver to be useful, although last
> time I checked (quite some time ago) Linux had the same limitation.

I'll start by booting this kernel, and watching the results.  We chose 
NetBSD because it is tracking current software even on this architecture 
and seems to have a real potential.  Our only experience with Linux was 
from linux-vr.org's 2.2 build kernel, and that didn't let us do any kind 
of external access, not even to CF - no devices registered, nothing useful 
in /proc.  Linux-mips.org is the place to find about the defunct linux-vr 
project, and they were last seen messing with a 2.3.x series kernel, 
though they seem to have disintegrated since.  I think we'll start with 
the keyboard driver since that is the most important, and we can easily 
mod the source when we find the scancodes.  Exploring the registry reveals 
that the Microsoft keyboard driver is used.  The problem is interesting - 
there are several models of this unit, some accepting braille input and 
some qwerty - two of each, with one in 32-cell braille and the other in 
18.  If we have anything to contribute, I'm sure we will.

One last thing, do you or anyone else here know how to change the memory 
allocation for user and program volatile storage from inside the CE 2.12 
registry, or by modifying a file?  I can't find the values anywhere, but 
we're getting heap overflow with CyaCE, the linux-vr project's bootloader 
based on pbsdboot (now only available for download in modified forms, it 
also having disappeared from the face of the earth).  That program 
requires uncompressed images, which I'd rather wasn't a requirement, 
especially for the sysinst kernel - so using hpcboot would be very 
helpful.  Even so, we would probably still first need to change the 
division of memory for the Sysinst kernel, at least, so it can boot up, 
for a 4m user store and 12m program, as opposed to the default half-and-
half.  Since we can't do it with CE, it having been locked up more than a 
default installation of OpenBSD, we need to hack it into the device until 
we can boot NetBSD.  Any suggestions?

Again, thanks for all your help!

Cheers,
Sabahattin

- -- 
Thought for the day:
    The only thing that hurts more than paying income tax
    is not having to pay income tax.


Sabahattin Gucukoglu
Phone: +44 20 7,502-1615
Mobile: +44 7986 053399
http://www.sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/
Email/MSN: <mail@Sabahattin-Gucukoglu.com>


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