System and method for enabling a target computer to use storage

Details System and method for enabling a target computer to use storage System and method for enabling a target computer to use storage

1997-06-06

1999-03-23

Sheikh, Ayaz R.

39520052, 395712, G06F 906

Patent

active

058871640

ABSTRACT:
A system and method for a target computer to use a storage device of its host computer and in particular for bootstrapping an operating system from the storage device onto the target computer. The computer system comprises a host computer coupled to a target computer via an I/O bus. In one embodiment the target computer is an embedded system comprising an intelligent data acquisition device. The host computer includes a disk drive with a file system and a file which serves as a virtual disk drive for the target computer, i.e., the file is essentially an image of a disk drive which would otherwise be coupled to the target computer. The target computer may be a BIOS level IBM-compatible personal computer. The target computer includes an option ROM with an int13H handler which hooks the disk service routine software interrupt vector of the target computer and forwards INT 13H requests to a device driver executing on the host computer via a shared memory on the target computer. The device driver converts the sector address specified in the INT 13H request input parameters into an offset into the virtual disk file and reads the data from the file to the shared memory. The int13H handler copies the data from the shared memory to its local memory, in the case of a read request, or from its local memory to the shared memory, in the case of a write request. The operating system booted onto the target computer may be different from the operating system executing on the host computer.

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patent: 5327549 (1994-07-01), Nissimov et al.
patent: 5581785 (1996-12-01), Nakamura et al.
Kuenster, Mark, Microsoft publication entitled, "Embedding Microsoft Windows 3.1," pp. 18-19.
Liming, Sean, Microsoft publication entitled, "Minimizing the Windows 95 Footprint For Embedded Systems Applications," pp. 14-17.

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