Re: xPC boot-up from hard drive

Gordon,

The boot floppy (not the embedded option) was certainly easier...
However there are a few problems with using the floppy disk "in
anger".

1) It's slow to boot up (and dependent on a floppy disk), which isn't
desirable for a RT control system
2) Trying to get "DOS on a floppy" for use with DOSLoader isn't
straightfoward. The only way I could find to get DOS onto a floppy
is to install it on a hard drive using the DOS install files and then
copy it bits of it back to the floppy (a complete DOS installation
won't fit) and "sys" it. For FreeDOS, this requires you to have a
FAT partition on the hard drive anyway... My first attempt was to
format an MS-DOS startup disk in XP and then use "DOSLoader" to add
the other files, but this didn't work (it said some address wasn't
available).
3)The model size is restricted because you need to fit DOS and the
model on a floppy for StandAlone. You could copy the xPC files to
somewhere on the hard drive, but you need a FAT drive to do this
otherwise DOS can't see them.
4) You need a FAT partition for logging data anyway, so need to mess
around with the hard drive even if you do boot from floppy.
5) Lik many new PC's my desktop PC (the host) doesn't have a floppy
drive! I had to buy a USB floppy drive and a box of floppies in
order to create the boot disks...

All in all it means that using xPC Embedded Option with a "normal" PC
(i.e. Win XP on NTFS) is pretty hard work! A detailed list of
instructions of how to do it, and the pitfalls would certainly be
useful.

Even if you do boot from floppy, given that FreeDOS is open source,
could a proper DOSLoader option not be implemented in xPC Target
which actually puts an appropriate version of DOS on the disk, rather
than relying on the user to find one?

I'm sure there are things I could have done more quickly if I was
more of an expert on DOS, partitions and boot disks but it's taken me
a lot longer than expected to get the Embedded Option working.

Still, got there in the end, and thanks for your help in doing so.

Chris

Gordon Weast wrote:
>
>
> Chris,
>
> Thanks for the detailed log of what you needed to do.
>
> I believe there are a few tools that can resize an NTFS partition
> that you might have been able to use but you would have had to
> get those separately from both XP and Freedos.
>
> This is why we generally advise people who want to use xPC Target
> to boot the kernel from a floppy. Then you don't have to do all
> this to your disk.
>
> Just remember that when you upgrade to a newer version of xPC
> Target
> you will have to create and transfer a new boot image to the hard
> disk. As we make improvements and enhancements, older kernels
> won't
> work with newer host code.
>
> Gordon Weast
> xPC Target Development
> The Mathworks
>
> Chris Evans wrote:
>
>> I have now managed to dual-boot the machine with XP and xPC and
>> here's how. There is probably a way to do it without
> re-installing
>> XP but I couldn't work it out...
>>
>> INSTALL FREEDOS:
>> Prepare FreeDOS disks as desribed on www.freedos.org
>> Insert FreeDOS Beta 8 (?Nikita?) Installer disk in drive and
> re-boot
>> Select FAT32 Kernel option
>> After reboot select MINI install
>> From menu:
>> Remove any existing partitions
>> Create FAT16 partition (2Gb) and format
>> Install system files
>> Insert FreeDOS FILES disk when prompted
>> When asked select c:\FDOS as the destination
>> When finished installing copy config.sys and autoexec.bat from
>> C:\FDOS to c:\
>>
>> INSTALL WINDOWS XP:
>> Boot from XP set-up CD and follow instructions
>> Create a new partition and format as NTFS or FAT 32
>> Install windows on this partition as normal
>>
>> CONFIGURE:
>> Add xPC boot files generated by the DOSLoader option ?
> xpcboot.com,
>> xpctgo16.rtb & checksum.dat to c:\
>> Add "xpcboot xpctgo16.rtb" to autoexec.bat
>> Edit boot.ini (hidden system file on c:\) to read ?xPC? instead
> of
>> ?unknown operating system?. Also change default to be xPC (this
> can
>> also be done using run/msconfig) and reduce the timer to 5s or
> less.
>>
>> By changing boot.ini the system could be made to boot
immediately
> to
>> xPC which would be good when running stand-alone.
>
.

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