Compact Flash I/O firmware design

Dec 13, 2004 1 Replies

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I am about to develop a Compact Flash I/O device for PDA (DELL AXIM). Fortunately I found a CF interface chipset with a UART port (Oxford Ox950). Now I got a few questions about the firmware design.

1) For the PDA side (Using PocketPC2003), I think the PDA already has an "integrated" CF driver inside of PPC2003, right? If I want to rewrite this driver, what should I do? What kind of tools should I have (like Platform Builder)?

2) For the CF I/O peripheral side, can I rewrite the driver? From the data sheet of Oxford OX950, it seems that the driver is already integrated into the chipset. Is it possible for me to rewrite the driver since I want to control its 2 customrized I/P pins?

Thanks.

Johnson

If you do not need very high bandwidth (i.e., < 100kbps), stick with the CE PCMCIA and UART drivers. Open your device like a CF+ serial comm card and get on with your product. Jumpting into driver develoment will inevitably bog your design down and likely make your software obsolete everytime a new version of the operating system is released. In fact, your product might easily be recognized by the Palm operating system.

By making your hardware conform to the CF+ serial card standard, it will automatically be supported by all Windows platforms (PDAs, laptops, etc.). BTW, there are simple PC-Card drives for PCs (I have a dual drive in my PC that I do development on). They cost about $50.

-- Andrew

Compact Flash I/O firmware design

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