PC/104

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Mon, Jul 16, 2007 at 05:07:00PM -0400, Zbigniew Koziol wrote:
> Does anybody around has some experience with these toys?
> 
> I once noticed this link in email of one of active participants of this list
> (I remember very well of whom, I am sorry not to remember the name):
> 
> http://www.syscompdesign.com/mppkit.htm

How can anyone call a 68HC11 powerful these days?  Why not go for an
arm, mips or powerPC instead.  Way more powerful and easier to develop
for.

> But thats not quite what i am looking for.
> 
> My boss (he is very good in hardware but learns Linux from me rather)
> directed me to PC/104.
> 
> I had some reading on the subject. But I do not still quite know how to
> approach it.
> 
> Would it be difficult to assamble something with Linux running on it?
> 
> This seems to be a big industry, perhaps well standardized (
> http://www.pc104.org).

It is quite common.  It has some limitations, but it is used by many
companies.  For example cisco uses PC104+ for a few of their routers.
It is not limited to just x86, although x86 is certainly the most common
user of pc104+.  Plan pc104 is hardly ever used since everyone wants PCI
today.  pci104 may start becoming the norm given many chipsets don't
even support isa anymore.

> Is it worth to invest time to learning these things? How that is related to
> embedded Linux in cell phones? Is there a job market for that kind of
> computer art?

No relation to linux on a cell phone at all.  pc104 is really just for
embedded computers with various isa or pci add on cards stacked together
and put in a box.  They generally run fairly normal software given they
tend to have 64MB or more RAM.  Really embedded tiny systems would be
purpose built and often have a lot less ram.

> I am sure that there are people around with some related experience. I
> simply would like to play with it. Possibly in some not very far future I
> would also need that kind of knowledge in my work.

Well the system I work on at work, involves a system on a board, with a
lot of pins on some small connectors connecting to a custom mainboard
with PCI and such on it.  We looked at PC104 but decided the layout
using stacked modules was completely hopeless for our needs.  We run
everything in a 1U box, which limits height.

--
Len Sorensen
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