I've got a number of MobilePro 770 and 780s which I would like to use
as portable switch consoles/network troubleshooting boxes.  Basically,
all they really need is tip/cu, ping, traceroute, tcpdump, a few small
network utilities, not much more.  No X or compiler support needed.

It looks like this could all be pretty easily built into a relatively
small crunched program in a ramdisk image (like is done with the
sysinst install kernel).  Such a kernel could pretty easily fit
(along with pbsdboot/hpcboot) in 8MB or so, and shouldn't have
trouble running in 24 (even with the ramdisk in memory).

What would be required to create a kernel which does not take over
the entire RAM on the machine, but leaves intact the portion allocated
in WinCE for "Storage Memory"?  This would let me put the kernel on
the internal drive and be free to reboot the machine if necessary
(even into WinCE to deal with stupid devices where some functions are
only accessible through an IE-requiring web interface) without having
to reload the system from external storage.

I'm going to get a CF or microdrive for one machine to use as a
"development" box, but I'd like to avoid having to purchase additional
hardware for the rest of them...

jdarrow

-- 
John Darrow - Senior Technical Specialist
Computing Services, Wheaton College, Wheaton, IL 60187
Email: John.P.Darrow@wheaton.edu (plain text please, no HTML or proprietary)
Neither spammers nor cold-callers will ever get my business, so don't bother.