# Operating System Upgrade

The operating system consists of two parts:

- RoBIOS
  Robot Basic I/O System
- HDT
  Hardware Description Table

All mobile robots controlled by an EyeBot share the same RoBIOS but may differ in the HDT to account for different sensors or motors connected to the actual hardware.

Upgrading of RoBIOS and HDT can be done seperately (usually RoBIOS remains the same when the HDT is adapted). There are two ways of upgrading:

- 1. Simply use Download to transfer a new version of robios.hex or hdtxxxx.hex to the EyeBot. The operating recognises these special files and will prompt whether the Flash-ROM is to be reprogrammed.
- 2. Use the background debugger (BDM) connected to the parallel port of a PC as described below. This has to be done when using a new (blank) Flash-ROM chip or when the stored RoBIOS operating system has become corrupted.

## Hardware Description Table (HDT)

Please see the full HDT documentation. In order to add/remove any sensors/actuators or change other EyeBot characteristics (eg. CPU speed), you can change the corresponding HDT file (eg. myhdt.c). Compile the altered c-file into a hex-file by using:

    gcchdt myhdt.c

Then download the new hex-file like you would an ordinary application program. RoBIOS will automatically detect the HDT-file and reflash the HDT section of the operating system. Reset the system after the reflash is completed.

Thomas Bräunl, 1999