booting windows from something other than a hard drive

[discoking]

Hi,

I'm interested in finding out about booting Windows from some sort of solid state device and not a hard drive. Does anyone know anything about this? Someone asked me if I could build an arcade machine for them and I said I'd have a think. I want to use off the shelf components so it's basically a pc in a cabinet but I don't want the thing to take ages to boot up when it's turned on - I want it to come on immediately. BTW I write video games for a living so the game part isn't a problem. Any ideas?

Greg

 

[edfair]

Better to look into WindowsCE. It is designed that way. Ed Fair
efair@atlnet.com

Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply.

Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[discoking]

Yeh, I thought about that but does CE support harddrives and does that mean I need special CE drivers for things like graphic and sound cards.

 

[CitrixEngineer]

You can get solid state drives - but they're very expensive still. Platypus technology, particularly, make some interesting devices. If you've got pots of cash...

http://www.platypus.net/nf-default2.asp

http://www.storagesearch.com/ssd.html

WinCE devices tend to have flash EPROMs that are updated by manufacturer's proprietary management software. Device drivers are not an issue, because the WinCE devices themselves are mostly not upgradeable.

There are exceptions, however, and some "Thin-client" manufacturers make WinCE devices that can have all manner of external upgrades, including hard disks. Most CE devices support sound and limited graphics.

I would hesitate before recommending one for games use, however, since the cut-down nature of the O/S means that DirectX and so forth is not supported, AFAIK.

I hope this helps

 

[edfair]

With the memory space addressable (and never totally used) you could probably create a windows OS with games installed , do a move of all used memory to another area of the machine, and burn that image into prom. On boot of the target machine you would do a download of the OS and games into the working area where it is expected to be found and execute from there. Principle works fine, used it for years with earlier operating systems.
You could probably do an emulation of the Apple stuff, since they run (ran) from PROM. Nothing is sacrosanct about running from a hard drive. Ed Fair
efair@atlnet.com

Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply.

Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.