Messages in this thread | | | From | Albert Cahalan <> | Subject | new tool | Date | Tue, 29 Oct 1996 17:37:00 -0500 (EST) |
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There are many pieces of hardware that Linux has no driver for because the manufacturer does not document anything. There may be a tool that can help.
I know someone who can design a board to record _everything_ that happens on the ISA bus. I'm not sure if that will help with PCI at all (the IO ports might work on some motherboards), but it is great for ISA cards, including parallel port devices.
Current plans call for a board with 16 MB of RAM to store all the data collected from the ISA bus. The board might have a 68xxx CPU and FPGA. The board can be programmed to collect data from a selected range of ports. The board might support IRQ, DMA, and/or memory mapped IO. The board is programmable, but too slow for real-time data compression. It has no MMU either, so don't get any m68k Linux ideas.
The board comes as a kit, so people may want to work together with a user group or college. You will need about $200 for the board, chips, connectors, CPU... Then you solder the parts together and add RAM. The board might require SRAM, though the designer will try to use common 30-pin DRAM SIMMs. You must be able to solder the tiny connectors on surface-mount parts.
I need a head count. How many people/groups are seriously interested in such a board? Suggestions? Simple modifications can be done to the existing design if you act fast. Large changes (like substituting fast IO for the RAM and CPU) can also be suggested, but remember that cost and difficult assembly are important issues for many people. I would like so send a list of email addresses to the designer.
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