Specifications

50 158004.B00
6 SOFTWARE
The TP400 offers a very high degree of PC compatibility. The vast majority of
software (both operating systems and applications software) that will run on a
conventional PC will also run satisfactorily on the TP400.
Most users will wish to use the MS-DOS or Windows operating systems (booting from
a hard disk, floppy disk or Flash File System) and then run off-the-shelf software, or
their own application. Other users will want to use Linux or one of the real-time
operating systems, several of which have TP400 Board Support Packages.
DSP Design offers a number of software products to ease software development.
6.1 SYSTEM BIOS
The system BIOS is a program that interfaces between the TP400 hardware, the
operating system and application code. It is responsible for controlling the TP400
hardware and providing a standard interface to the higher levels of software. The
BIOS also deals with functions such as initialisation and testing of the TP400
hardware following power-on.
The TP400 uses a system BIOS supplied by Phoenix Technologies. Users should
note that the BIOS is the copyright of Phoenix.
The BIOS has an in-built Setup program, which can be invoked by typing the F2 key
at the keyboard during the boot sequence. Section 6.2 contains more information on
the Setup program.
The BIOS is programmed into the Flash memory chip as part of the manufacturing
process. Note that the system BIOS and BIOS extensions are combined in a single
256k byte file, which is programmed into the top 256k bytes of the Flash memory
chip. The contents of the Flash memory chip can be changed by the user if
necessary, as described in section 6.5. The default is for a system BIOS, a VGA
BIOS and the Flash File System BIOS Extension to be programmed into the Flash
memory.
A number of pre-configured BIOS files are available on the TP400 Utility Disks.
These differ in the BIOS extensions that they contain. See the README.TXT file in
the BIOS directory of the TP400 Utility Disks for further details.
Under some circumstances the TP400 BIOS may need to be modified or additional
BIOS code may need to be added to the BIOS EPROM. Tools exist to deal with these
issues, so contact DSP Design for details.
6.2 BIOS SETUP PROGRAM
The BIOS has an in-built Setup program, which can be invoked by typing the F2 key
at the keyboard during the boot sequence. The setup program allows many system
parameters to be changed, and then stored in CMOS memory. Amongst the
parameters that can be changed are the current time and date, disk drive types,
enabling and disabling peripheral devices, security and power management.