C-Touch OS

Just a quick question

Is the embedded xp on the colour touch screen stored on the flash card ? in the touch ?

Thanks

 

Os

So would it be theoretical possible to upgrade th ctouch to embedded vista ?

 

In theory you can run any OS that supports the hardware. The hardware in the C-Touch may or may not have Vista drivers available. I would be interested to know if it is possible to have a version of Vista that would run with the CPU, Flash and Ram limitations of the C-Touch. More out of morbid curiosity rather than any actual desire to install Vista on anything. I can't imagine that Vista would run well enough on the limited hardware to even warrant trying.

For the record Linux runs fine on the C-Touch, although if you want to run the HomeGate on Linux there were a some issue with Wine compatibility last time it was checked (about 3 years ago).

 

In theory you can do anything - you've bought the hardware and, along with it, a license to Windows XP Embedded. However, will you have enough RAM? Will you have enough CPU power? Will all the software applications be compatible? How will you enter all the program information into the registry? Which Vista Embedded software modules will you choose to include in your build? Are you in the clear regarding the Microsoft licencing agreement? You'll be on your own figuring out all the answers to these questions.

Just remember that you'll void your warranty doing any of this, which means you've got no support from Clipsal if you ask "Can you pretty please put the Windows OS and C-Touch software package on my CF card to bring my C-Touch back to life?"

I've got enough curiosity to be interested in how it goes, but not enough bank balance to risk turning a C-Touch into a boat anchor.

 

Os

Can the exsisting flash card be backed up by just copying it ?

 

Copying the card will not be sufficient, you'd have to create a clone or ghost image of the entire OS. (Nortons Ghost software).

One option may be to obtain another card, eg an Industrial Fixed CF that is identified as an IDE fixed drive, not a removable drive such as normal CF cards. These cards also have much better reliability and life write-cycles.

 

[ Shaking head at why anybody would ever consider such a thing ]

 

is that the CTC support CF card with a bigger space, like 2 giga CF card??

 

Hi All

Pretty new to all this c-bus stuff so I had a play around with a c-touch screen I've got that was well out of warranty.

Here's what I found so far:

Managed to install a 256MB PC133 CL3 SODIMM from an old compaq notebook (could possibly go to 512MB) and upgrade the CF card to 1GB. Some CF cards have a utility to change them to fixed instead of removable, you can even use the CTC to do this after changing the CF slot to the primary IDE and using a usb boot disk with the utils installed.

To get the thing to boot from USB, you can plug in a keyboard and get into the bios to change the boot order (delete key on boot). Handy for running any standard diag tools, other OS, BartPE etc.

You would probably want to go to at least 4GB CF if you were going to install XP-Pro, and make it a micro-drive so you don't wear out the CF card with excessive write cycles. (EWF on xp pro another option?)

This of course would all be done at your own risk (A big one given the price). I had to do it to prove to myself how versatile these units are. I imagine someone with some time on their hands and a little programming knowledge could design some cool custom apps for these things.

Cheers
JC