Making my first XP Embedded system

  • Thread starter Thread starter JB
  • Start date Start date
J

JB

Hi all.
In my company we plan to make test regarding XP Embedded to see what we
can make with this kind of OS.
Before launching the task and obtain all the necessary element I need to
have a feedback on your experience about this. In fact, what we have in idea
is to make a "medium" box based on VIA EPIA M or CL wit ha Compact Flash
disk in it.
We wonder :
- how we can make a bootable CF disk containning XP Embedded from a
normal development PC ;
- what is the size of an XP Embedded system (need to know this to
know the size of the required CF disk we need to buy) ;
- what kind of development are possible on XP Embedded (more like a
Pocket PC 2003 restriction or no restriction like on a traditional XP system
?)


Really thanks to all of you.
Hope to have some news soon.
 
-----Original Message-----
Hi all.
In my company we plan to make test regarding XP Embedded to see what we
can make with this kind of OS.
Before launching the task and obtain all the necessary element I need to
have a feedback on your experience about this. In fact, what we have in idea
is to make a "medium" box based on VIA EPIA M or CL wit ha Compact Flash
disk in it.
We wonder :
- how we can make a bootable CF disk containning XP Embedded from a
normal development PC ;
Click to expand...

You mean you want to run it on a standard desktop? I've done this (it
turns out the image for my compact device also runs on a PII we had
lying around). I use a flash device that plugs straight into my IDE
channel, rather than one you'd use in a camera or whatnot.
- what is the size of an XP Embedded system (need to know this to
know the size of the required CF disk we need to buy) ;
Click to expand...

Ah, well how long is a piece of string? What do you need it to do? How
much time do you have to invest in reducing it? Do you need the GUI? I
understand it's possible to produce an image in under 10MB, but I
don't think it'd do much. My current image takes around 100MB on
compressed NTFS, though my 'vampire' build is closer to 500MB for
what is pretty much a full XPPro.
- what kind of development are possible on XP Embedded (more like a
Pocket PC 2003 restriction or no restriction like on a traditional XP system
?)
Click to expand...

It's based on XP Pro, it's just that you put in the bits you need and leave
out the bits you don't. Anything you can do on Pro you should be able
to do on embedded, but you have a few extra bells and whistles such
as the Enhanced Write Filter which prevents writes to your device,
keeping changes in an overlay instead - this prolongs the life of flash
devices and helps prevent corruption or unwanted changes to your
data.
I highly recommend doing your development on a spare hard drive
rather than a flash device, as you'd wear out the card pretty fast doing
dev builds on it. Leave putting it onto the CF until it does what you
want on the hard drive.
 
Ok ... I see.
I've just take a look to Windows XP Embedded video show on the Windows XP
Embedded Web site and I've learn some thing regarding this. The only thing
that is not very clear for me is when they use Target Analyse Program (TAP).
This is good to analyse our dev platform but how to do if I plan to make a
dev for a totally different PC ? Let me explain : I've my P4 - 2.4Ghz for my
dev with full of magic powered device on it but my target is a poor VIA EPIA
System (with lot of embedded feature on the mobo).
How can I say to my Target Designer that I wan't to build a system for
this particular target ?
How TAP can analyse it in deep without being installed a first time on
it ?
Click to expand...
You'll need to install XPPro onto your target and run TAP from there.
It'll also run on Win2k but works a little better under XP. My system is a
geode-based 300MHz thing, and XPPro runs like an ageing asthmatic
mutt on it, however, it *does* run, and you only need it long enough to
run tap.exe. For most of my development, however, I had XP Pro in the
first partition of a HD on there, with a second partition and free space
for XPe and the EWF (which creates its own partition). XP Pro could then
be booted each time I wanted to copy my image across. It runs a lot
better if you turn off the Luna interface stuff.

*snip*
Ok I see.
I fact we plan to make from full media box to place in house (MP3 / DVD /
DivX) to a really small footprint box for car'embedded system (GPS / MP3).
The first one can use traditionnal HD but the 2nd must use CF Disk.
We're also plan to look at WinCE .Net for this last point but have plan
anything yet.
Click to expand...
I looked at CE.net, went cross-eyed and ran away. The main benefit of
XPe is that you can use your existing apps, which is what we've done -
Apache & PHP and a couple of our own in-house apps.
*snip*

Flash device are so sensibles ???
I know that I'll not make my dev on them ... my plan are to prepare all
system on my dev first and when all is good testing the result on the
device. But there will be absolutely nothing for dev install on the target
device (this is why I ask the question for TAP).
Click to expand...
Will it take an IDE HD at least temporarily so you can do as I described
above?
 
Heidi Linda said:
Ok ... I see.
I've just take a look to Windows XP Embedded video show on the Windows XP
Embedded Web site and I've learn some thing regarding this. The only thing
that is not very clear for me is when they use Target Analyse Program (TAP).
This is good to analyse our dev platform but how to do if I plan to make a
dev for a totally different PC ? Let me explain : I've my P4 - 2.4Ghz for my
dev with full of magic powered device on it but my target is a poor VIA EPIA
System (with lot of embedded feature on the mobo).
How can I say to my Target Designer that I wan't to build a system for
this particular target ?
How TAP can analyse it in deep without being installed a first time on
it ?
Click to expand...
You'll need to install XPPro onto your target and run TAP from there.
It'll also run on Win2k but works a little better under XP. My system is a
geode-based 300MHz thing, and XPPro runs like an ageing asthmatic
mutt on it, however, it *does* run, and you only need it long enough to
run tap.exe. For most of my development, however, I had XP Pro in the
first partition of a HD on there, with a second partition and free space
for XPe and the EWF (which creates its own partition). XP Pro could then
be booted each time I wanted to copy my image across. It runs a lot
better if you turn off the Luna interface stuff.

*snip*
Ok I see.
I fact we plan to make from full media box to place in house (MP3 / DVD /
DivX) to a really small footprint box for car'embedded system (GPS / MP3).
The first one can use traditionnal HD but the 2nd must use CF Disk.
We're also plan to look at WinCE .Net for this last point but have plan
anything yet.
Click to expand...
I looked at CE.net, went cross-eyed and ran away. The main benefit of
XPe is that you can use your existing apps, which is what we've done -
Apache & PHP and a couple of our own in-house apps.
*snip*

Flash device are so sensibles ???
I know that I'll not make my dev on them ... my plan are to prepare all
system on my dev first and when all is good testing the result on the
device. But there will be absolutely nothing for dev install on the target
device (this is why I ask the question for TAP).
Click to expand...
Will it take an IDE HD at least temporarily so you can do as I described
above?


Yes u're right ... the only thing that afraid me is to begin with a given
hardware type (like the EPIA one) and change to something else where we
cannot install XP Pro on it. If we have a plaform that run only throught CF
is there way to connect a HD on it ?
Even if it's possible I don't see can I install it on this kind of hardware
(no CD Rom drive, ...).
U see what I wan't to say ?
In all case it make a important assumption to the target. I'ven't think that
we must have an XP installed on this target but maybe that Development Kit
for embeded PF allow this. For the moment I don't plan to bought these
expensive pack (I've take price from kontron and this is really expensive
!!!) so ...

I all case really thanks for all these informations.
Maybe we'll see us around this newsgroup ;)
Have a nice day.
 
Hi JB,
how we can make a bootable CF disk containning XP Embedded from a
normal development PC.
Click to expand...

When your project is ready you build it, and then you can plug CF to your
dev machine and do simple file copy to CF.
But better procedure would be like Heidi said to use network and to share
one drive. What will you chose for net OS it is up to you.
Better because during FBA there are some thing that XPE writes to disk (CF).
And because you wont need to move CF between target and dev platform.
what is the size of an XP Embedded system (need to know this to
know the size of the required CF disk we need to buy) ;
Click to expand...

In my case 60 MB is enough for our program and OS.

What kind of development are possible on XP Embedded (more like a
Pocket PC 2003 restriction or no restriction like on a traditional XP
Click to expand...
system Like

As Heidi said it has full functionality of Windows XP Professional.

But there are other things like EWF that you don't have is standard windows.
Our reason for choosing XP Embedded instead or XP was because EWF, and easy
deployment.


Best Regards,
Slobodan
 
dev for a totally different PC ? Let me explain : my target is a poor VIA EPIA
System (with lot of embedded feature on the mobo).
Click to expand...

The good news about running TAP is that it finds everything on the MB. The
bad news is that it finds **everything** on the MB. I am in the process of
adapting our product to several "legacy" motherboards for an upgrade
program. I don't need USB or sound or any bells and/or whistles, so I run
TA after booting with DOS, then adding the network adapter that TA doesn't
find.

Running TAP adds about 20 meg of stuff I don't need and is a bear to try and
pare back out.

Good luck,

Tom Salicos
 
Ah, I think I see what you're saying. If XP Pro won't run on your hardware,
it's unlikely XPe will.
XPe is pretty much the lego version of XPPro. Just without the danger of
getting one of the small bits stuck up your nose.
 
Hi, the first XPE CD is bootable and it boots into XP Pro like system
so you can run TAP. All you need is a CD-ROM and an BIOS that can
boot off it.

 
Really thanks for all these points.
I've order my evaluation pack so I'll try this as soon as possible.

Hope to see u soon.
Thanks.
 
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