How to build up QNX 1.44M demo floppy

[Xuejun Cao - Jim]

If I have QNX OS, and Vogager etc, HOW could I build up
a floppy like QNX demo? What I mean is the bootable floppy can run
standalone without harddisk.

Thanks!

-Jim

[Mitchell Schoenbrun]

Your question is a little broad. There is no problem putting a
boot file on a floppy diskette for booting QNX. Once booted
your sysinit file can start the demo. The challenge is to get
everything to fit on the diskette. I suspect that QSSL has
used some compression method on their demo disk.

[Michael S. Scheidell]

On Fri, 08 May 1998 14:26:04 -0400, Xuejun Cao - Jim wrote:
>If I have QNX OS, and Vogager etc, HOW could I build up
>a floppy like QNX demo? What I mean is the bootable floppy can run
>standalone without harddisk.
>

you need to purchase the voyager SDK development kit, watcom c?, photon
app developer, and source to the standard qnx libraries

--
Michael S. Scheidell <>< <http://www.fdma.com/>
See Diskless-Embedded Web server <http://pc104.fdma.com>
Distributor of QNX RTOS and other Embedded/Realtime Products

[Jeff Adler]

Mitchell Schoenbrun <masc...@tsoft.com> wrote in article
<35536...@news.tsoft.net>...

> Xuejun Cao - Jim <jc...@regentec.com> wrote:
> > If I have QNX OS, and Vogager etc, HOW could I build up
> > a floppy like QNX demo? What I mean is the bootable floppy can run
> > standalone without harddisk.
>

> Your question is a little broad. There is no problem putting a
> boot file on a floppy diskette for booting QNX. Once booted
> your sysinit file can start the demo. The challenge is to get
> everything to fit on the diskette. I suspect that QSSL has
> used some compression method on their demo disk.
>

It would seem easy enough to make an archive using:

cat filelist | pax -wvo | freeze >/fd0/myfiles

Then, in the OS build file, create a RAM disk, then in the sysinit file on
the floppy disk do something like:

melt /myfiles | pax -rvo /ram (or something like it)

then

prefix -D /
/ram/bin/prefix -A /ram /

(or something like that).

Good Luck

Jeff Adler
Automation Services

[The Great Brubaker]

Hello!

> Xuejun Cao - Jim <jc...@regentec.com> wrote:
> > If I have QNX OS, and Vogager etc, HOW could I build up
> > a floppy like QNX demo? What I mean is the bootable floppy can run
> > standalone without harddisk.
>
> Your question is a little broad. There is no problem putting a
> boot file on a floppy diskette for booting QNX. Once booted
> your sysinit file can start the demo. The challenge is to get
> everything to fit on the diskette. I suspect that QSSL has
> used some compression method on their demo disk.

Now, is it possible to "steal" the contents of the demo disk in order to
use it in a new, self-made bootdisk? I would also need to know the
contents of the demodisk to know what the minimal required files are.

Any ideas?

Greetings and thanks in advance,

Sergio

[Richard Copeman]

The Great Brubaker wrote in message ...

I don't think so. This disk is pretty well locked up as far as accessing it
goes. It doesn't have a valid filesystem of any type on it so you can't
mount it or view it.

What I suspect is happening is that QNX have a small boot loader on the disk
that is read by the BIOS and this acts like a mini OS. All it seems to do is
to allocate a RAM disk and use BIOS calls to read raw blocks from the floppy
and decompress them into this RAM disk. Once the disk has been read and
decompressed the mini OS makes a jmp into the Real OS (QNX) which is in the
RAM disk. Once here QNX then takes over and runs all the neat toys that you
see on the demo.

Once you've cracked this part the rest is easy - it's just another resource
constrained system:-))

Richard.