Dell Laptop for Embedded Work

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and click on IBM Certified Used Equipment in the Shop for column. I picked up a T30 with serial and parallel ports that I am very happy with for about $500. It looked like new.

Not a total solution (at least until we write the IP) is our new Cardbus product Tarfessock1. First out is will be available in about

3-4 weeks time (that is 2 weeks late on our website info) and initially will offer a Xilinx Cable III lookalike solution as a small part of it's functionality (Cable IV if we figure what is needed). It also has a RS232 serial port capabiliy but that might take a couple weeks more to get into the supporting FPGA builds.

Longer term this board has the capability to act as a full parallel port and we are designing a connector module to support that as well as all the other features - RS485, ADC, DAC.

On a more general solution there are parallel port cards available for Cardbus. I'm not sure if there are any for Expresscard yet. We will have a solution for Expresscard but not in Q3 and maybe not even Q4. It's on our roadmap and very likely to happen. Just a question of what product we bring to market first.

USB to serial adaptors seem work well. Beware of USB to parallel adaptors. They tend not to work with Xilinx software.

John Adair Enterpo> Hi:

"beware" of the batteries..

Seems sony batteries = potential bomb.. ;), due metal dirt inside that cause spurious shortcircuit.

Anyway I think parallell port is bye-bye. Make a strategy to phase it out. Problem will just be worse by time. Besides with fpga knowhow you could make your own hw tools if needed ;)

I recently spent a while looking for a modern laptop that had all the ports - I came up with Dell Latitude D610, which has RS232 and parallel. Not sure if it's still a current model but should be findable used.

Tell the pen-pushers it's specialist test equipment....

Certainly the OpenTV tools which make heavy use of a parallel port do not work with USB or PCMCIA parallel port devices - I've tried.

We went with a Dell M60 in the end (which is new a couple of years old) as it had serial and parallel as standard.

D

Check the Dell images of the product, specifically the underside. If, towards the back of the bottom, probably in the middle, there are 2 little flaps then that is where the docking station connects - which is a multiway connector (lots of connectors!) which usually is more than just a USB device which gives you the extra ports. For example, they'll run VGA and DVI over it as well.

D

over

We tried one of these in the past, but they didn't work with the OpenTV tools we were using which used the parallel port.

D

I came up with Dell

model but should be

We went with a M60 from Dell, which had serial and parallel, but I guess they don't do those any more...

If you are using your 2812 for controling any kind of switching power supply, take into account that PP emulators are far less susceptible to EMI than USB kind. This way you also do not have any problems connecting and disconnecting target while CCS is active.

Mitja

I use the Quatech SPP-100 too. However to get it to work on a low port (ie, < 0x0400), I had to move the internal parallel port to 0x278, then hack the SPP-100n.inf file and reinstall the driver (I am using XP) to get it to install and behave at 0x378.

SPP-100n.inf:

... [LptportXP.LogConfigOverride] LogConfig =LptportXP.Override0,LptportXP.Override1,LptportXP.Override2,LptportXP.Override3,LptportXP.Override4,LptportXP.Override5,LptportXP.Override6,LptportXP.Override7,LptportXP.Override8 ...

... [LptportXP.Override8] ConfigPriority=NORMAL IOConfig=378-37f(3ff::) IRQConfig=3,4,5,7,14 PcCardConfig = 9 ...

Howard

I took a look there and none of the models seem to include a floppy. Also, none describe the presence or absence of serial and parallel ports. I have heard horror stories about the parallel port compatibility in IBMs, which I need for my laser printer. Any comments?

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...

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Is that horseshit still going around? Many many years ago, I was part of a team developing a demonstration interactive on-demand cable TV system. My company even bought a cable TV company to serve as a test bed. We needed a computer to be the heart of it, and the most suitable for our purpose was a Data General Nova 1200. At the time, computers were considered the province of the Data Processing Department. They had a (small) approved list and the Nova wasn't on it.

In exasperation, I said to my boss that if we needed two 5,000 scopes, we'd have the order signed in an hour, but one 10,000 computer, also a piece of lab equipment, was out of bounds. My remark got kicked up three management levels*, and the next meeting of the board of directors agreed that lab equipment didn't come under Data Processing's edict.

Jerry _________________________________________

• Me. Group leader. Lab director (to whom I griped). VP Research, a member of the Board. The board itself.

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Thanks for the link.

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I came up with Dell

model but should be

The new D620 lacks the ports. I'll have to see if our Dell vendor has any D610 remaining. Or look for some other vendors of reconditioned units.

Thanks for the tip!

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I think the latest laptop chipsets does not support parallel ports. When I went shopping for a PC for embedded support needs last year, I ended up with an HP NW8000 which was just beeing phased out because of this and similar problems.

Maybe get an old one, or a PCMCIA card with a true parallel port.

(- Or concentrate on the AVR stuff :-). I think AVR Studio now supports USB Serial Bridges.

The

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I tried to use a Dell laptop for data acquisition in a car for a lot of test runs, but somehow it got its USB ports screwed up after a while (probably due to heating). I ended up with using a standard Dell PC which seemed to work fine.

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I'm typing this on a Dell Latitude 610, and it has both a serial and a parallel port. Dunno if that's one your "approved" list or not, but this has been a great laptop for my needs.

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