Re: Options for local booting of vxWorks and applications

[Korhonen Timo <Timo.Korhonen@psi.ch>]

Hello Andy,

we at SLS are planning a solution with Compact Flash cards and
PMC CF (PMC234) adapters from RAMIX (or GE Fanuc Embedded Systems, 
http://www.geindustrial.com/cwc/gefanuc/embedded/)
that plug on an IOC PMC slot. I could bring the system (mv5110) to boot 
from the CF, but unfortunately have too little time to get
further than that. However, now the work is continued by another
person and hopefully we will be running soon (although that person
is also quite loaded with work.)
To boot from CF one needs a few modifications to the vxWorks kernel;
the bootrom also needs to be rebuilt. TrueFFS is not required (although
I first thought so) because the CF card has a normal IDE interface.

When one gets that to work, it looks actually rather nice; the CF
looks like a normal disk where one can simply copy files. Booting
is really quick.
We plan also to use industrial grade CF cards (for example from
SanDisk) which are guaranteed for 2 million write/erase cycles
and have a 7-year guarantee. They are a bit more expensive than normal
commercial versions, but the increased reliability should more
than offset the costs.


Cheers,

Timo


Andy Foster wrote:
> Hello All,
>
> I was just investigating what options there are for booting
> vxWorks applications locally, rather than across the network and
> was wondering if any sites are already doing this?
>
> It seemed that one option is to use a SCSI device with a DOS file
> system attached.
>
> Is anyone using Compact Flash or any other type of local memory?
> I am really interested in solutions for the MVME-2700 and
> the MVME-5500 (in the future).
>
> What we are trying to achieve is faster local boots, reducing the
> network traffic at system startup.
>
> Many thanks for any comments and/or examples.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Andy
>
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--
Timo Korhonen  PSI (Paul Scherrer Institut)
               CH-5232 Villigen PSI
               tel + 41- 56 3103262  fax + 41 - 56 310 3383
e-mail:	       timo.korhonen@psi.ch