RE: [Discuss-gnuradio] GnuRadio on PCI-104 (i.e., Fedora on USBFlash Drive)

[Jeff Brower]

William-

Isn't there an issue of how much GNU radio can actually do on a Pentium M 
system?  The Lippert board you mention looks
like it's limited to 1 GHz or less with passive cooling.  I assume this is a 
mil app, but you can use fan cooling?

What will GNU radio actually be doing?

-Jeff


> Thanks for the response. More questions below.
>
>> Bahn, William L Civ USAFA/DFCS wrote:
>> >
>> > I need to get GnuRadio up and running on some PCI-104 embedded
>> processors, which means I need the O/S to boot from a USB key. I have a 4
>> GB key but am willing to purchase an 8 GB or even a 16 GB key if that's
>> what it takes.
>>
>> What embedded processor?  If it's x86, it won't be a problem.
>> Otherwise, you could be in for a world of fun.  ;-)
>>
>> > The PCI-104 has 1 GB of DRAM.
>>
>> ummm, do you mean PC/104, like here [1]?
>
> No. The PCI-104 is a modified form factor that has a PCI connector instead of 
> the ISA connector.
>
> We are using Lippert's Cool RoadRunner 4 which uses a Pentium M Processor.
>
>> > An alternative would be: Does anyone know of a Linux distro that can be
>> made to run from a USB key that we can get GnuRadio up and running on
>> without too much heartache. We've tried installing it on DSL (Damn Small
>> Linux) but can't get the fftw libraries to compile.
>>
>> I've installed both Gentoo and Ubuntu to thumbdrives.
>
> I see install directions for GnuRadio for Ubuntu, but don't see anything for 
> Gentoo. As I look over the instructions
> for the various distros, they seem quite different, so I wouldn't know how to 
> even start trying to install it on
> Gentoo. So I'll try Ubuntu first.
>
>> The easiest way to do it would be to pull the hard drive from a laptop,
>> boot from the Ubuntu CD, and plug in the thumb drive (should be the only
>> disk in the laptop in order to avoid accidentally overwriting the boot
>> sector of other drives).  Then proceed with install.
>
> Is accidentally overwriting the boot sector on the hard drive something that 
> is super easy to do? I would rather not
> get into tearing someone else's laptop apart if I can avoid it.
>
> So what is the sequence I am looking at doing here? Is it something like:
>
> 1) Use a laptop that has a CD drive and install Ubuntu onto a thumb drive on 
> that machine.
> 2) Boot the PCI-104 machine using the thumb drive.
> 3) Install GnuRadio onto the thumbdrive on the PCI-104 machine.
>
> How do I handle the various drivers that are needed for the PCI-104 machine? 
> Can I create a boot thumbdrive on one
> machine and use it to boot a very different machine?