Need help badly! What to do with *.rom file?

dcheng · ‎2003-11-17

Posted on November 17, 2003 at 22:11

dcheng · ‎2003-11-14

Posted on November 14, 2003 at 17:28

Hello,

It's me again. I am still trying to configure the TFT registers. But have no idea how to!

I downloaded the Bin Editor and the a1_tft2.rom (BIOS with Philips TFT support) from the STPC downloads site. I can modify the TFT configuration registers using the Bin Editor, and it saves the changes to the ROM file.

Question now is:

What do I do with the *.rom file? Does it replace the BIOS that is located in the AM28F020 Flash device?

If you care to know...

I just inherited the ATLAS Dev Kit from a guy who left the company months ago. No one in the company knows anything of what he did with the board, so I have no idea what type of configuration is initialized. I am in desperate need of help! The current status is that we have General BIOS 2000 and Windows NT (???) installed, which starts up fine. But like I mentioned before, the TFT display (NEC 6844) is offset both vertically and horizontally.

Please help! Thanks!!!

marios · ‎2003-11-17

Posted on November 17, 2003 at 22:11

Newbee,

a good thing to do is to check if your company has purchased an annual maintenance package with General Software. If yes, they can answer many of your questions. If no, they may still answer some. If you don't have the maintenace package I suggest that you push your superiors to have it for a year. It will save a lot of time, and a lot of frustrations.

- the .rom file is a binary file (32K I think), that the BIOS compiler and linker (called BIOSTART) puts into its own ROM binary file. This .rom file is the ''VGA BIOS'', over which General Software has no control. They just use it to build the BIOS.

- you should have the General Software manuals somewhere. Please read at least the sections where it explains how their suite is structured. If you don't, give them a call, they will pdf them to you.

- if Embedded BIOS 2000 is like my version (one step older), the whole thing assembles and links under a DOS window.

- with the Industrial CPU, the BIOS binary made for the Sharp worked fine with the NEC 6448.

- In the software tools that ST Micro has, isn't there a VGA register utility that you can use ''live''? I think so. I'm not sure if there's a version that supports the Atlas though.

Felix