> In an ideal world, yes. In practice the #1 problem in semi-embedded projects > are BIOSes not booting from USB disks at all or unreliable. > Lucky you if USB boot works for you that often :-)
USB boot is not even in the top 100 problems, let alone the #1 problem, in embedded system development. Most embedded devices boot from flash storage. I venture to say, if you're developing an embedded system, you made a design mistake trying to boot USB. There would have to be an extremely good reason to want that on an embedded device. But maybe you're not really talking embedded. Whatever "semi-embedded" means, PC/104 may qualify, since it's stock PC logic in a different mechanical format. If you need maximum PC compatibility, you want PC/104. It handles USB, VGA, Ethernet, all the normal stuff, like any stock PC, often with very superior thermal/vibration/power-reg specs. If you found a couple bad embedded-USB vendors, stop using their products, or stop using USB for embedded system boot. This thread was about PC rescue. I don't understand this whole embedded systems tangent. Those almost always require various levels of customized software labor/effort to make work at all. "Bringing the board up" is famously known as the most difficult step, if you want to talk about the #1 problem....and that's without USB. Trying to generalize anything about desktop PCs - what we're trying to rescue here, yes? - from embedded systems is really backwards, especially since it's the other way around, in that the PC world is invading the embedded world, as with PC/104. Regards ----------------------------------------------------------- If you wish to unsubscribe from this mailing, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of: unsubscribe t2
