Re: Changing motherboards

Tech-Archive recommends: Repair Windows Errors & Optimize Windows Performance

Doug,

First, depending on your product lifecycle & costs, I'd recommend
looking at some long-life PC motherboards. I just switched from an OTS
consumer grade motherboard to a long-life one, since our product (a
medical device) requires substantial certification and hardware changes
can be costly to retest, etc. Some manufacturers in this area are
American Predator are ITOX Applied Computing; I'm sure there are more.
(Note: they're not cheap!)

Your idea of supporting multiple chipsets should work as long as you've
got all the PnP components. However, you may lose some settings
depending on the device. For example, if you have a network device,
you will probably lose all of your network settings. I have also had
problems with video card settings, since PnP will reset the resolution,
etc. If your new motherboard has different a USB controller, you'll
probably lose all your USB device settings that don't automatically get
reinstalled (such as printers). If this is the case, you'll have to
come up with some creative solutions -- I wrote an XP service which
resets certain registry values at every boot.

One method I use is to separate all the non-hardware XPe components
from the hardware. In this way, it's fairly easy to create a new XPe
configuration if you need to migrate to new hardware. In other words:

1) Take your current configuration, remove all hardware-related
components, and reduce dependencies as much as possible (in other
words, strip out components that will get pulled in during a
dependcency check.) Save this as the "Base" configuration.
2) Use TAP.EXE to create a devices.pmq file, and then create a macro
component from this configuration.
3) To create your final config, load the "Base" config, then add the
hardware macro component. Save this as the "merged" config.

You can now repeat #2 & #3 fairly easily everytime you need to support
new hardware. In fact, you can easily create your "multi"-config by
adding several hardware macro components. As your configuration
evolves, you update the "Base" config first, then repeat #2 & #3 for
each set of hardware.

-- Don

.

Relevant Pages

  • [SLE] Device / Configuration Cruft
    ... Following hardware problems, I recently replaced by motherboard and CPU. ... All the other modular hardware (SCSI adaptor, video card, RAM, DVD, DVD ... thing I've done along these lines is to remove the Ethernet configuration ...
    (SuSE)
  • percpu related boot crash on x86 (was: Linux 2.6.38-rc1)
    ... percpu related boot crash that I can see with .38-rc1: ... Hardware name: System Product Name ... # Linux/x86_64 2.6.38-rc1 Kernel Configuration ... # Device Drivers ...
    (Linux-Kernel)
  • Re: Question about the history of EXEC 8, OS 1100, OS 2200, etc.
    ... almost any configuration and was enough of a system to allow doing a sysgen ... 1106 at the LA Data Center, and I don't remember any such beast as a starter Exec for the pre-2200/900 systems. ... arbitrary hardware configuration. ... While I can forgive the original developers for the design of program files, I don't think there is any good reason/justification for the ugly hacks done since that have resulted in program files, large program files, and large element program files. ...
    (comp.sys.unisys)
  • 2.6.18.3 Lockup on Athlon MP
    ... I am sure it's not just a hardware issue, though, ... as well as the kernel configuration I am using. ... # ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power Interface) Support ...
    (Linux-Kernel)
  • Re: Need your opinion - important!
    ... > Responsible for computer systems / hardware configuration management. ... > instruments in order to validate new computer configurations; ... > DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES ...
    (comp.software.testing)