On powering up, the Pulsar just displays a purple screen with the word 'loading' filling it which is subsequently replaced by the running on-board firmware. The usual keys of DEL, F2, F10, F12 etc did nothing.
However, lurking under the SODIMM, was a conventional AMIBIOS copyright sticker
which confirmed my belief (hope?) that there was a conventional BIOS inside. Running through
numerous 'CTL/ALT/DEL then press-a-key' cycles revealed that the D key gets you into the BIOS.
Although the Pulsar is fitted with a 1GB RAM module the BIOS is only reporting 512MB of RAM present. This is because elsewhere the amount of memory set aside for the frame buffer is set to 512MB. I disabled the "Show custom logo" to get the more usual boot screen shown below. (I like the EVALUATION COPY, NOT FOR SALE towards the bottom of the screen!)
At this time I had removed the SATA DOM and there was a pen drive plugged into the front of the Pulsar.
Moving to look at the boot options I found that there was only one....
...the strangely named ROM FLOPPY DRIVE.
At this point I tried a small experiment:
Booting with no DOM and no pen drive resulted in 'Boot failure error code 17'
Booting with no DOM and a Linux FAT16 formatted pen drive resulted in 'Boot failure error code 4'
As an experiment I used the Linux 'dd' command (on another machine) to copy the Pulsar SATA DOM across to a pen drive. With the pen drive then inserted in one of the USB ports the Pulsar happily loaded its own firmware from that pen drive and ran as before. This shows it will boot from a pen drive, the only problem is sorting out how to format/present the alternative code we would like it to run.
I moved the SATA DOM over to another machine to have a look at what was there. Fdisk reported:
Disk /dev/sdb: 512 MB, 512483328 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 62 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdb1 1 58 465884+ 6 FAT16 /dev/sdb2 59 62 32130 6 FAT16
..and directory listings showed:
total 47320 drwxrwxrwx 2 root root 16384 Jan 1 1970 . drwxrwxr-x 7 root staff 140 Jun 6 17:12 .. -rwxrwxrwx 1 root root 2778120 May 18 2036 0base.tle -rwxrwxrwx 1 root root 216 May 18 2036 0bootarg.ime -rwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9449224 May 18 2036 0browser.tle -rwxrwxrwx 1 root root 1570840 May 18 2036 0client.tle -rwxrwxrwx 1 root root 1320728 May 18 2036 0initrd.ime -rwxrwxrwx 1 root root 5965 May 18 2036 0meteor.bom -rwxrwxrwx 1 root root 12968 May 18 2036 0misc.tle -rwxrwxrwx 1 root root 1145672 May 18 2036 0network.tle -rwxrwxrwx 1 root root 2295864 May 18 2036 0nvidia.tle -rwxrwxrwx 1 root root 2476152 May 18 2036 0os.ime -rwxrwxrwx 1 root root 588856 May 18 2036 0oss.tle -rwxrwxrwx 1 root root 1144 May 18 2036 0platfrm.tle -rwxrwxrwx 1 root root 235960 May 18 2036 0support.tle -rwxrwxrwx 1 root root 2261896 May 18 2036 0video.tle -rwxrwxrwx 1 root root 2778120 May 18 2036 1base.tle -rwxrwxrwx 1 root root 216 May 18 2036 1bootarg.ime -rwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9449224 May 18 2036 1browser.tle -rwxrwxrwx 1 root root 1570840 May 18 2036 1client.tle -rwxrwxrwx 1 root root 1320728 May 18 2036 1initrd.ime -rwxrwxrwx 1 root root 5965 May 18 2036 1meteor.bom -rwxrwxrwx 1 root root 12968 May 18 2036 1misc.tle -rwxrwxrwx 1 root root 1145672 May 18 2036 1network.tle -rwxrwxrwx 1 root root 2295864 May 18 2036 1nvidia.tle -rwxrwxrwx 1 root root 2476152 May 18 2036 1os.ime -rwxrwxrwx 1 root root 588856 May 18 2036 1oss.tle -rwxrwxrwx 1 root root 1144 May 18 2036 1platfrm.tle -rwxrwxrwx 1 root root 235960 May 18 2036 1support.tle -rwxrwxrwx 1 root root 2261896 May 18 2036 1video.tle -rwxrwxrwx 1 root root 12 May 18 2036 factory.conf -rwxrwxrwx 1 root root 80 May 18 2036 features -rwxrwxrwx 1 root root 384 May 18 2036 licence total 16400 drwxrwxrwx 2 root root 16384 Jan 1 1970 . drwxrwxr-x 7 root staff 140 Jun 6 17:12 .. -rwxrwxrwx 1 root root 4194304 May 18 2036 0certs.img -rwxrwxrwx 1 root root 4194304 May 18 2036 0meteor.cfg -rwxrwxrwx 1 root root 4194304 May 18 2036 1certs.img -rwxrwxrwx 1 root root 4194304 May 18 2036 1meteor.cfg
The standard firmware is all about interacting with SUN servers. I have no interest in this. If you are, you can find the manuals on the Flextronics website.