Ampro Corporation 5001692A manual On-Board Flash Access and Use, Flash Programming Requirements

Chapter 4 BIOS Setup

On-Board Flash Access and Use

This section describes how to use the on-board flash memory and load an application in the available lower 768kB region of the 1MB of Flash Memory. The application can boot directly from the on-board flash memory.

The Flash memory can be accessed at 128MB intervals above the base address (with the exception of 256MB). For example, if the Flash address is set to 8MB, then the Flash memory can be accessed at 136MB, 392MB, 520MB etc.

CAUTION To prevent a system crash or unusable BIOS, do not overwrite the BIOS. The entire 1MB of Flash is accessible, but only the lower 768kB region is available for custom applications. The higher 256kB region is used for the BIOS and can be overwritten, rendering the CoreModule 420 unbootable!!

Flash Programming Requirements

To build an example application under DOS or in a Windows DOS pop-up screen, you need to have one of the following tools.

•Microsoft Visual C++ 7.0 – This is a commercial product and is available from Microsoft. It can be downloaded as part of the .NET Framework from http://msdn.microsoft.com. The compiler is part of the Microsoft .NET Framework V1.1 Software Development Kit and the NET Framework Redistributable Package V1.1. Both of these need to be downloaded and installed.

•Open Watcom C/C++32 1.1 – This is a commercial compiler product available from http://www.openwatcom.org. It is also included on the CoreModule 420 Doc & SW CD-ROMin the cm420\software\examples\flash\watcom directory.

•Other versions of the above tools may also work.

The following example application is also necessary and is provided by Ampro.

•Example application – This application can be found in the cm420\software\examples\ flash\watcom or cm420\software\examples\flash\msvc directory for the Watcom compiler or Visual C++ compiler respectively. This example application will be described in more detail in the following procedures.

Building the Example

Ampro provides an example for flash programming found on the CoreModule 420 Doc & SW CD-ROMunder Miscellaneous Source Code Examples in the Support Software directory. The example actually consists of two parts:

•Example application – The example application shows how a C++ compiler can be used to generate a 32-bit application, which runs without an Operating System. First, build this application using the make.bat file. The make.bat file will build app.exe.

•Bootloader – The bootloader can be found in bootsec.asm and the final Flash image is built with image.asm. You can use make.bat to build the bootloader and Flash image (in the cm420\software\examples\flash.

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