XP on OLPC - a contrarian view -- followup

[Tomeu Vizoso]

Hi,

I remember to have heard some rumor about Microsoft considering to use
the internal NAND as swapping, thus killing any OS that may be
installed there.

This would mean that by "dual-boot" we are talking about having two SD
cards each with a different OS?

Regards,

Tomeu

On Sat, May 17, 2008 at 1:44 AM, Robert Myers <rmyers7 at mindspring.com> wrote:
> Richard,
>
> Sorry.
>
> 1) I knew about the separate memory for the firmware. I've reloaded it
> often enough :-). I was more interested in publishing that thinking
> deeply about how the XO works.
>
> 2) Again, sorry about my loose use of language. I should know better,
> and try to be more precise. However, my understanding of the OF V2 is
> that it incorporates the legacy behavior of the underlying BIOS of a
> MS/DOS-Win machine, which is it's critical (at least for this issue)
> difference from OF V1.
>
> But my point stands; the MS demo machine is single boot, and ignores the
> flash and its contents. This would be a very bad thing to let out of the
> lab.
>
>>> I just saw the Microsoft video of an XO running XP. In it the XO
>>> single boots from an 'insyde' BIOS. The MS guy says that XP doesn't
>>> fit on the flash, and is installed on an SD card. In this case, I'd
>>> guess the flash is just being used as a home for the BIOS.
>>
>> The system firmware + Embedded Controller firmware lives in a 1Meg SPI
>> NOR flash part connected to the EC.  The 1Gig NAND flash part does not
>> store any system firmware.
>>
>>> I can see why techs at MS did this to get a working prototype rather
>>> than having to wait for (or worse yet, contribute to) the OF V2
>>> bootloader/BIOS.
>>
>> I prefer to use the term system firmware because BIOS refers to a legacy
>> product class.  OpenFirmware's capabilities are so far above a legacy
>> BIOS product you can't even put them on the same scale.
>>
> Bob
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