On Sun, May 06, 2001 at 07:43:52PM +0100, David Miller wrote:
> Marcus's idea about the memory card gave me an idea....
> What is the VMU based on? Is i a Compact Flash or Smart media card? 

Probably neither.  

> If so
> (or even if not) what about wrting the kernel to that? The dreamcast check
> it as it boots doesn't it? Then you could minimise what you have to put on a
> CDR.

No, it's not big enough to hold a kernel.  It's only 1 Mbit (128Kbyte) as
far as I know.  A 16X memory card (2 MB) could hold a kernel and a small
ramdisk image though.  But you probably wouldn't want to if you had the CD.  

> For example:
> Put a boot CD in, it tell the DC to look at the VMU, the kernel boots....
> Using some clever IP stuff, it automagically loads / from NFS...
> Perhaps a little hopefull... But then again, I only got my DC yesterday :)
> 
> D Miller

If you're loading root from NFS, then you might as well grab the kernel from 
the network via TFTP as well.  

Here's what I think would be ideal:  Something like RedBoot, which could 
either boot from the network interface via TFTP or via the serial by 
downloading an image in raw or srec format using zmodem.  RedBoot is also
scriptable, it can store its parameters (IP address, server IP address, 
default image name, etc) and also a boot script (e.g., load raw via tftp 
vmlinux.bin 0x00000000; go 0x00008000) in flash so when you turn it on
it can automatically boot up.  

I'm going to check now if there's an SH port of eCos and RedBoot...



Brendan Dowling