[Pc_Support] Re: Tom's Hardware on building a BertPE USB device -- BertPE from Compact Flash

[Bryan J. Smith]

Aaron Morrison <ae4ko at amsat.org> wrote:
> (It's BartPE, BTW)

Yep.  I'm just getting old.  I've been catching myself doing
that more and more.

> I've used it.  Nice tool for the toolbag -- think LiveCD
> for windows.  Other people have integrated a lot of stuff
> that make it even more useful.  There are plugins for
> antivirus scanning, cdrecording, etc (in some cases, you
> must have a copy of the program in question -- e.g. Nero).

Right.  And I'm currently using it as a LiveCD myself.
 But that's not what I'm interested in it for.

> Full read/write capability for NTFS, too!
> <grin>

Yep, hence our prior thread weeks ago -- when I first heard
of it (man, I was just so oblivious).

> I've got a disk that includes the Novell Netware client so
> that I can connect to our older netware servers, if needed.
> Very handy. Definitely worth looking into.  Already saved
> me a lot of work on a couple of occasions.

What I want it for is a "prototyping" solution for an
embedded system -- booting from Compact Flash.  BertPE is
able to not only load read-only (kernel /minint), but it can
establish a ramdisk to run out of (or at least portions).

In the end, I'm going to go with Windows XP Embedded (XPe) --
which will be officially licensed and cheaper per unit.  But
right now I need to show off what can be done from Compact
Flash with our Mea wireless cards on a Transmeta tablet.  I
was hoping BertPE was such a solution -- especially since the
800x600 resolution exactly matches the tablet's.

I've got 2GiB of Compact Flash to work from which shows up as
an ATA master (2 x 1GiB in an adapter).  E.g., under Fedora
Core 1, it is /dev/hda.  But I don't want read/write access,
that will wear out the EEPROM in no-time.

I want to build a BertPE FAT16 image that I can put into a
CFlash, have it boot read-only (which it can), and establish
a Ramdisk.  It won't be quite "end-user" but it will do the
job for demoing with our card, and a few applications.

If I can generate the BertPE FAT16 image, I'm sure I can dd
it into the CFlash -- along with the MS MBR sector --- under
a Fedora Core 1 boot to the device.  It's how I'm currently
yanking different images up and down to the CF-ATA device
right now.



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