Ibm
Embos, Ever heard of that?
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Ibm
Embos, Ever heard of that?| Extremo |
Posted: Jul 31 2003, 11:54
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 Newbie Beta Collector  Group: Members Posts: 13 Member No.: 1138 Joined: 29-July 03  |
I recently purchased a settop-like Commodore 64
Web.It! computer (actually a x86-based PC unit with built in C64
Emulator). This thing uses PC-DOS 2000 with IBM EmbOS (in ROM) as operating system. As far as I could find out, EmbOS is IBM's custom version of an embedded MS Windows 3.1. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any more info on this on the internet (like SDK, application notes, whitepapers, etc.) Has anyone ever heard of this thing and/or seen the development environment in action? Extremo |
   
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| vette3619 |
Posted: Aug 1 2003, 01:46
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 Elite Beta Collector Group: Moderators Posts: 523 Member No.: 3 Joined: 15-March 03 |
Can you capture a copy of the rom
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| BeGiNnEr |
Posted: Aug 1 2003, 02:45
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 Advanced Beta Collector Group: Members Posts: 137 Member No.: 122 Joined: 16-March 03 |
Mmmm, never heard of it, but it sounds interesting!
-------------------- -> Copyright © 2003 <- -> BeGiNnEr <- ------------------- Intel Celeron "Williamette" 1.7GHz ECS P4VXASD2+ Socket 478 Motherboard 256MB Kingston PC-133 SDRAM 60GB IBM Deskstar 7200RPM HDD 6GB Maxtor 5200RPM HDD VisionTek XTASY GeForce2 MX200 - 32MB SDRAM 8x Toshiba CD-ROM / 16x10x40x BTC CD-RW On Board VIA Rhine II Fast Ethernet Adapter On Board VIA AC '97 Audio Best Data 56K V.92/V.44 Modem Cyber Acoustics 2.1 Speakers 19" ViewSonic G790 CRT Monitor Microsoft Windows XP Professional |
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| Extremo |
Posted: Aug 1 2003, 06:08
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Newbie Beta Collector Group: Members Posts: 13 Member No.: 1138 Joined: 29-July 03 |
I will try to make a Ghost-Image of the ROM this
weekend. Could be a little tricky, because the machine has a ROM-"drive", a Flashrom-"drive" and a RAM-"drive". Well, we'll see. Extremo |
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| apple2gs |
Posted: Aug 1 2003, 06:53
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Newbie Beta Collector Group: Members Posts: 7 Member No.: 1072 Joined: 19-July 03 |
my eduquest had a backup of its os and gui on a rom
it was cool |
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| vette3619 |
Posted: Aug 2 2003, 12:36
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Elite Beta Collector Group: Moderators Posts: 523 Member No.: 3 Joined: 15-March 03 |
cool  -------------------- |
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| Extremo |
 Posted: Aug 3 2003, 02:18 AM | ||
Newbie Beta Collector Group: Members Posts: 13 Member No.: 1138 Joined: 29-July 03 |
It's done! Well, it really WAS tricky, but I finally got it working in VirtualPC 5.1. The original machine has a touchpad, dual video (VGA and SVideo) and a integrated modem. It took me some hours to find out how the flashrom and rom drives are mounted. Since Windows (or EmbOS) resides in ROM, it cannot write to it's configuration files. The original machine uses IBM's shadow.exe to redirect disk writes to a ram drive. I edited out all this stuff in the configuration files and put in drivers suitable for VirtualPC. The system still throws a couple of errors but it's running fine, although you can't connect to the internet via VirtualPC's virtual network, yet. If you want so see what IBM EmbOS is like just PM me. I'll try to upload the .vhd to a pub or your personal server. Oh, did I mention that it is in german? 
Extremo | ||
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| Roy |
Posted: Aug 3 2003, 03:21
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Newbie Beta Collector Group: Members Posts: 37 Member No.: 65 Joined: 16-March 03 |
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| xJulian |
Posted: Aug 3 2003, 07:48
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 Advanced Beta Collector Group: Members Posts: 146 Member No.: 89 Joined: 16-March 03 |
Thanks, I'll have a look at it for sure. If it works
out like it should (and no one else has time) I could also pack it into
Win3.1-style installation floppies. Edit: I've had a little peek, and my first impression is: LOL. That thing is closer to MS-BOB than to MS-Windows.  I've also started to look "under the hood"... I'm quite surprised it works (almost) without complaints, considering we're using a HD in place for the ROM- _and_ the RAMdrive. Maybe I can get around the need for two partitions using subst or a real RAMdrive... Different question, was the PC-DOS inside the vhd included with the OS or did you choose it yourself? |
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| Extremo |
Posted: Aug 3 2003, 03:59
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Newbie Beta Collector Group: Members Posts: 13 Member No.: 1138 Joined: 29-July 03 |
I had to rearrange things a little because the original BIOS of the machine allows to boot from D: (VirtualPC doesn't) so that the PC DOS bootfiles do not need to reside on C:. The machine originally runs PC DOS 7 Revision 1. The only thing I changed is I made it run from C:. The PC_DOS.zip inside the .vhd is not originally there. I just forgot to clean things up 
You can get rid of some error messages by resizing the partitions so that drive E: has a little more space. I forgot that normally writes to E: would be redirected to another drive (C: I think) and so it doesn't matter that on E: is only 2048 KB available. Extremo | ||
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| xJulian |
Posted: Aug 3 2003, 05:39
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Advanced Beta Collector Group: Members Posts: 146 Member No.: 89 Joined: 16-March 03 |
Okay, as far as I can tell right now, I should be
able to make an installation CD, just FYI so nobody does the same work. 
Will this be considered abandonware? |
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| vette3619 |
Posted: Aug 3 2003, 07:03
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Elite Beta Collector Group: Moderators Posts: 523 Member No.: 3 Joined: 15-March 03 |
Cool xJulian
I think it would be because it is Win 3.1/Dos based -------------------- |
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| im_to_hyper |
Posted: Aug 7 2003, 06:48
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Newbie Beta Collector Group: Members Posts: 30 Member No.: 113 Joined: 16-March 03 |
Yeah, it would. If most of us have never even heard of it, why wouldn't it be? Sorry this post ist so late.... I was out of town for awhile. | ||
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