Can you boot from DVD or SD Card?

[mclovin82]

Hello All,

 

Have been a member of this forum for quite a while but usually just lurking around & leeching stuff from all of your hard work.

 

I've got an AVIC-X910BT running Chuck88's latest mod - Thanks Chuck, pretty sweet stuff - works great.

 

I saw the hardware specs for the F series hardware and I'm curious to know if it is possible to boot the device via DVD or SD Card.

(http://avic411.com/index.php?/topic/31169-hardware/ )

 

The AVIC is basically a small computer 500/600mhz, 256mb ram, SSD, DVD rom, etc running WinCE 5 with Pioneer's skin on top of it.

My thought is that just like any other computer, there has to be some type of BIOS on this thing which would control all of the low level hardware decisions. The splash screen is basically hiding the POST testing and OS loading in the background - during those first few seconds there's probably a way to put the device into a BIOS screen.

 

Would like to set the device to boot from DVD or SD card. - To be clear I mean I want it to actually start up off the external source, not just reference the SD card and still boot into Windows (testmode files).

 

The ARM processor (ARM1136J) is based on 32bit RISC architecture meaning it cannot natively run x86 applications however there are a lot of devices that use this processor and other forums are pretty close to finishing up a bootloader for it. (http://darkforestgroup.com/forum/index.php/topic,6067.270.html) Those guys are trying to develop the bootloader so that they can port Android onto phones not originally shipping with it - I think the one they're targeting is a Samsung S5620 which runs same CPU as the AVIC.

 

When the bootloader is finished and IF we can boot from DVD or SD card, it will be possible to run other OS's on the AVIC via a LiveCD or ISO mounted to an SD card without having to format the HDD. This would allow us to get Android running on the head-unit by booting a DVD or SD card while still preserving the current configuration. This would also open the door to allowing for a 'restore DVD' which could be popped into the Navi to restore it to factory specs..

 

Anyway, just thought I'd put it out there and see if anyone had any ideas.

 

Cheers,

[VBLUE42]

The read speed of either of the drives you ask about would so slow as to bring the unit to a complete crawl. Don't try and re-ivent the wheel here. Just use the unit as is. These units barley work the way they are now.