Date: Tue, 6 Oct 1998 14:19:36 +0200 (CEST) From: Andrzej Bialecki <abial@nask.pl> To: Peter Wallace <pcw@mesanet.com> Cc: freebsd-small@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Command-line i/f (Re: PicoBSD) Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.02A.9810061243090.3751-100000@korin.warman.org.pl> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.3.96.981005164517.7183A-100000@freeby.mesanet.com>
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On Mon, 5 Oct 1998, Peter Wallace wrote: > > > Peter Wallace > Mesa Electronics > > On Mon, 5 Oct 1998, Mike Smith wrote: > > > > Whats the big deal about cramming this onto a single floppy... > > > Wouldn't a real embedded FreeBSD application use a small flash drive? The > > > smallest chips that we use now are 4 M Bytes and about $12.00, cheaper > > > than a floppy drive! > > > > They don't have mounting screws, nor can you plug them into a standard > > motherboard. 8) > > > > Lots of "embedded" stuff involves an ordinary PC bolted to the inside > > of a big wooden box or similar. > > > > But I think lots _more_ embedded stuff will be: higher reliability > / wider ambient temperature range / smaller size / and lower cost than can > be achieved with a floppy for boot device... You're of course right. The truly embedded solution would be to use an SBC with DiskOnChip and no moving parts. But that's much more expensive... > I guess it depends on what the imagined target for PicoBSD is. The ability to run from flash disk is very important for me, as this is probably the best choice for building a reliable device (no moving parts, fast access etc..). And you're right that it usually will mean that the available disk size can be bigger (though it depends - low end SBCs sometimes are able to accomodate only 1.5MB of flash, and there are still questions of cost/unit). So, this is one of the important targets. OTOH, there are many people who want to use their spare, old PCs as a turnkey networking device. For them, ability to boot the system from such inferior (but standard) device as floppy is very important. So is for me - and as long as this is possible (without twisting our brains in knots :-) I'd like to keep the size of picobsd below 1.44MB. Of course, this is also a matter of how flexible is the building procedure, so that you could easily change the size parameters if you have enough space on the target media. I'd say it's pretty easy even with current building process. It can be improved, of course... patches are welcome :-) Andrzej Bialecki -------------------- ++-------++ ------------------------------------- <abial@nask.pl> ||PicoBSD|| FreeBSD in your pocket? Go and see: Research & Academic |+-------+| "Small & Embedded FreeBSD" Network in Poland | |TT~~~| | http://www.freebsd.org/~picobsd/ -------------------- ~-+==---+-+ ------------------------------------- To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-small" in the body of the message
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