Re: Trying to wrap my head around WinCE development process

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In that case, you probably can't download the image via the bootloader, but
need to write it to the hard disk. That is, figure out where it's finding
the nk.bin file that it's loading and, saving that old one, put your new one
in place instead. If you let the device boot to CE, it's possible that
you'll be able to see the disk where nk.bin is, copy it to a new location,
then use one of serveral methods to copy *your* nk.bin to the right
location. You might do this via a USB stick (the easiest, probably).

For me, no, the common procedure is to build the OS, program it into the
device and boot it. So, for me, I'd be copying nk.bin to the hard disk
every time. Yes, the bootloader is probably loading your nk.bin just to RAM
and jumping to it (and that's the right thing for debugging the OS in many
cases). If you have a DEBUG OS, though, you should be able to get it loaded
and running any way you want, whether loaded by the bootloader over the
network or loaded from hard disk, and then debug it.

"Contact the vendor" is always the answer for getting the bootloader for a
device...

Paul T.

"ajcrm125" <ajcrm125@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:a78f40ff-0159-442e-b2b8-9cc4dd602394@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
On Nov 6, 11:47 am, "Paul G. Tobey [eMVP]" <p space tobey no spam AT
no instrument no spam DOT com> wrote:
Well I decided to start over from scratch. It appears as if I didn't
have all the kinks out of the "run-time image" download and usage
process and was missing (among other things) a console on the OS
design.

So here's some more information: I aquired an VIA Artigo complete
with CE 6.0 + VC2005 at the ESC in Boston. I created an OS design and
tried to send it to the Artigo via the method described in the
classroom videos but in the video, the artigo seems to boot into some
sort of bootloader which allows you to connect to a dev station. My
Artigo (and I imagine all of the ones that were passed out) did not
have this but rather had the standard Microsoft boot menu , allowing
the user to either boot into Microsoft Embedded Standard or CE 6.0.
For the life of me I could not figure out how to get the target system
to talk to my dev station so I decided to format the hard drive and
follow the instructions given in one of the sample projects:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsembedded/en-us/products/spark/samples.mspx

Here, I was able to make a bootable USB key and make the newly
formatted HD bootable as well. Included was a menu to allow the
system to boot into CE or fire off eboot. I tried eboot and
finally.... the OS image downloaded to the target device. As soon as
that was complete, the target device reboted itself and the boot menu
came up, asking wether to boot into CE or eboot (again). This time I
chose CE.... but what I found is that it's just loading the image of
CE on the HD (which is what was provided in the sample project)... not
the new image I just created. So when I download my run-time image of
CE to the target device..... where does it go? Memory??? How do I
run it?

I'm assuming the practice is to download the run-time OS image to the
target device, try it out/debug, fix, rinse and repeat untill you're
satisfied with the OS. At which time copy it to the HD permanently?

I wish I had the bootloader that is referenced in the video but who
knows what happened to that... must have gotten nuked when MS
installed everything on these boxes.
:-(


.

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