ROM disk [ was Re: RAM disk ]

[Steve Dyer]

In article <6052 at cit-vax.Caltech.Edu>, wen-king at cit-vlsi.Caltech.Edu (Wen-King Su) writes:
> Reading about RAM-DISK drivers gave me an idea about building a
> transportable, shake-able, kick-able, virtually indestructible :-) UNIX
> box, whose root partition resides on a ROM-DISK.  Given that there
> exists a working RAM-DISK driver, it should be pretty simple to modify
> the dirver to treat a block of ROM as a disk.  User who wants to build
> a ROM-DISK can first create a RAM-DISK, copy all the necessary files
> into the RAM-DISK partition, then burn the content of the RAM-DISK into ROM.  

HP sells a portable UNIX lunchbox called the "Integral PC" which provides
most of the UNIX utilities in ROM.  It struck me as a niche product, although
it's certainly "proof of concept".  Whether the market demands a ROM/nv-RAM
UNIX box is a different question.  I have waxed effusive here on the same
concept successfully implemented on the much simpler MSDOS environment, the
Toshiba T1000, a machine which comes with drive C: (DOS itself and all its
utilities) in ROM, a 3.5" 720K floppy as drive A:, and optionally, a 768K
non-volatile RAM card which can be configured as drive D:.  With the combination
of ROM and non-volatile RAM, once can effectively ignore the floppy for many
tasks.  HP also sells a diskless portable not-quite-clone PC with similar
features (but for a lot more money than the T1000.)

-- 
Steve Dyer
dyer at harvard.harvard.edu
dyer at spdcc.COM aka {ihnp4,harvard,husc6,linus,ima,bbn,m2c}!spdcc!dyer