If you are
willing to go to an ARM, then I would put on say 16M and
have lots of room for a complete image - an ethernet inferface would
also be easy (built into many ARM devices), and would allow fast
transfer of images.
Ethernet seems ideal - high-speed and flexible. What I'm not sure of is how
such a box would get configured with its IP address, nor once it was
configured how it would be found on the network by a controlling system
application somewhere.
I didn't say IP - however you could do that if you want the complexity...
Ethernet is simple and reliable, and easy to work with on a target from
DOS or Linix ... I don't see why you would need to use a routable protocol,
at least for me the local network is fine.
Maybe DHCP solves half that problem; can a device
broadcast on the network and
find a DHCP server without being told of its IP address in advance? Even
assuming it can, and the DHCP server assigns it an IP address, I'm not sure
how client controlling machines would then locate it on the network, though.
Doubtless both questions are easily answered by a trained network admin,
though :-)
Last thing we probably need though is something that relies on DHCP, or on any
particular flavour of OS being present on any machine on the network.
All solvable problems, however in my experience, the IP stack will add as much
complexity to your embedded device (or more) than the disk drive interface.
Why does it have to be RS-232 or IP - does nobody remember plain simple
ethernet anymore? (almost as simple as RS-232 - way faster).
Dave
--
dave06a (at) Dave Dunfield
dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools:
www.dunfield.com
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