Headless XP System

C
No argument here, but miscellaneous C code that reads and writes to hardware from userland is not a driver and presents many problems, not the least of which is being preempted. What are needed are Linux (kernel) Drivers in the strict sense so that you can use DMA, etc. and with RTAI and the recent kernel facilities, achieve real time operation. Interrupts are an issue, but ways have been found to make them work so intelligent hardware can be used to good advantage. COMEDI is an example of what is needed to really make use of DAQ cards, for example. Something similar for the Woodhead protocol cards would be really great as well, they might then sell enough to get the price down where it's feasible to use them.

Regards

cww
 
M

Michael Batchelor

And even less restrictive, you can take a copy of OpenBSD (or substitute your favorite BSD tree here) and strip out their logos and add your own and distribute it as yours without having to give anyone anything. You don't even have to give the customer code or the rights to redistribute as you do with the GPL. Of course, if you're a small shop, and you don't want the customer to hound you to death, you can also give them the BSD code, which won't cost you anything. (And it's the morally correct thing to do anyway.)

In fact, this is so completely legal that Red Hat used OpenBSD as the base for their secure web server edition a few years ago that was *NOT* freely distributable and didn't come with the code. Why? Because the BSD license was the only way they could get an existing code base that didn't obligate them to allow redistribution.
--
Michael R. Batchelor
www.ind-info.com

Industrial Informatics, Inc.
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K

Ken Emmons Jr.

In reply to Michael Griffin:

The original post did not mention that he was stripping microsoft trademarks, just that he wanted a Windows machine that was reliable and did not want to go to linux or Embedded XP. I was just mentioning that is you want a reliable microsoft machine with read only filesystems you should purchase Embedded XP. Of course if you are reselling a product without paying for it you are in violation of the law, I don't believe I ever mentioned anything of the sort.

I personally prefer Linux for these types of applications, but there are times when it is not practical for your project.

~Ken
 
M

Michael Griffin

In reply to Ken Emmons Jr.: You replied to my message, which replied to Curt Wuollet's message who... The discussion had by that time (as often happens) gone far off the original topic.

Curt Wuollet was asking why so few hobbyists are digging as deeply into MS-Windows as compared to "the old days" of MS-DOS. I was pointing that this was due to the licensing terms of MS-Windows. An OS with "free" licensing terms allow people to not just modify the OS, but also to distribute their modifications to other people who in turn add their own twist to it. You can't do this with MS Windows XP Embedded.

That may not be relevant to some people. It does however explain why (as Mr. Wuollet asked) there is relatively little interest these days in how MS-Windows actually works inside.
 
B
Back in the good old days of DOS 3.1, I was able to convert my US keyboard into a German one (I was studying German at the time and wanted the umlauted vowels, etc.) by using Debug to examine memory and change the character tables which translated the codes returned from the keyboard into ASCII characters. The tables were quite recognisable in a hex dump. Then I upgraded to DOS 3.2 and tried to do the same thing. The tables were still there but no longer used recognisable representations for the characters... It wasn't that we weren't willing to have a go - it is just that it became soooo time-consuming trying to figure out what was going on.
 
C
I suppose it helped that computers were more of an end in themselves, rather than just a tool at the time. I got a chance to dust off that ancient knowledge today resurrecting a printing press console that ran DOS on a screaming 386SX16 Pilz industrial computer that was past it's prime. They estimated $5k to repair so, when I quit laughing, I rehosted it on a brand new 3Ghz P4 IBM Think Centre (still has a serial port) with a 15" LCD monitor for a total of about $600. I had to mess with the system files and revector the serial port to COM2. I even had to play some keycode games because the DOS was a German version. Sort of overkill to the max to run that old DOS application, but it all works, runs fine and uses less power.

Regards

cww
 
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