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Beginner Question: What do you think of this development board ?

Hi,

I am a beginner to be embedded world, and I have been looking around to purchase a simple development board to experiment on. Since I am doing this as a hobby, I am restricted to low-cost options. I came across the following board while I was doing a google search.

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It is based on the Virtex II Pro FPGA that contains a PowerPC processer and a bunch of reconfigurable logic cells. It costs about $195 for the board alone (I had a limit of $200). I have access to any necessary test equipment in the lab in which I am working. I am planning to use this board to learn things like cross-compiling the Linux kernel, installing the kernel and device drivers (if they are available), developing simple programs, etc., It looks like a good option because I can also experiment with Verilog/VHDL programming.

Has anyone already worked with this board before ? Is it a good investment for a beginner hobbyist ? Are there better/cheaper (beginner) alternatives out there ?

I am familiar with the Linux OS and I have been developing applications in C/C++ for a while. I have just started reading about Kernel internal, device drivers, etc., and I looking forward to beginning my journey into Embedded Linux.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in Advance, Vijay.

Reply to
VC
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Hi

I am totally newbee to the embedded world. long back i use to work on C. developed a project purely on C (user interface,Database, logic) every thing on c.

but now i purely work on Database and Unix techonologies. I am intrested and curious how things work in embedded systems. i really dont know what stuff to read and what to start with. any one had any comments for me and suggestions for me.

My first goal is to understand linux kernel. i work with linux,sun solaris,IBM AIX, digital and oracle database techonologies.

i play with linux a lot.

but dont know indepth about kernel.

please throw some light on my enthusiasm.

Regards chandra

VC wrote:

Reply to
Blink

all that can be done with ~50$ Linksys WRT54G Acces Point. Linux allready ported in. 16-32MB ram, 2-4MB Flash, 125-200Hz MIPS.

If that is important then go for it.

Linksys for Linux all the way - you CANT beat commodity hardware prices.

Pozdrawiam.

--
RusH   //
 http://randki.o2.pl/profil.php?id_r=352019
Like ninjas, true hackers are shrouded in secrecy and mystery.
You may never know -- UNTIL IT'S TOO LATE.
Reply to
RusH

Is the source that Linksys released sufficient to build a modified kernel and boot it?

From this posting it seems it is:

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But Googling I havn't found many pages discussing using the released code.

Tony

Reply to
Tony Jones

You dont need Linksys code. There are at least three independent projects with patched kernels. OpenWRT, Sveasoft and the third one I forgot :).

google for openwrt, google for asus WL500 B/G (same hardware + USB + LPT ports).

Taiwan is beating the living crap out of western embedded board makers. Thers no point in designing your own board if you dont innovate. Commodity functions are implemented, debugged to death and simply working in ~50$ soap box available in every suppermarket.

Pozdrawiam.

--
RusH   //
 http://randki.o2.pl/profil.php?id_r=352019
Like ninjas, true hackers are shrouded in secrecy and mystery.
You may never know -- UNTIL IT'S TOO LATE.
Reply to
RusH

Step 1. don't steal other people's message threads. If you're starting a new subject/topic, create a new message, don't reply to someone else's and change it.

Step 2. take a read around:

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Have you built your own linux kernel on a desktop machine ? You should know how this works before trying to build embedded kernels.

My advice would be just to remember that generally, an embedded linux device is just like a stripped down linux PC. take out everything you don't need in the kernel take out all the applications and libraries you don't need and shuffle things around a bit :)

good luck.

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Reply to
Damion de Soto

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