Good low cost laptop for embedded work?

PC104 stacks in ruggedized cans are *easier* to shuffle from one bench to another than laptops are.

And they have keboards and displays?

Mine has a small 640x480 LCD display and a mini-keyboard hooked to it. I can still tuck the whole system under my arm, and it takes less benchtop space than any laptop.

Theoretically ESP magazine owns the rights to that. I need to get off my fat ass and write another article that I can post with a clear conscience.

Hi Ian,

Actually I was just about to settle for a little Dell this morning. Then, just before ordering, I found that it doesn't even have a parallel port. Ouch.

So now I am wondering if an MSP430 tool works via a bidirectional USB-parallel adapter such as the Micro Innovations USB545C. Else we'd have to buy the more expensive USB programming pods. I posted a question on the MSP430 Yahoo forum and to TI support. Let's see.

Regards, Joerg

The Dell group that handles leased laptops has an eBay store where they sell factory reconditioned Dell laptops. I have bought a couple and they seem quite nice. Not as cheap as you might get a laptop elsewhere but I was comforted by the fact they have been reworked by Dell technicians.

Perhaps you can find a year or two old model that still has parallel and serial ports.

If this link doesn't work just go to eBay and search for "Dell-Financial-Services" and you should eventually end up at their eBay store.

Rob Young (no affiliation with Dell, just satisfied with their products)

I've tried some USB-parallel solutions and none of them worked with the FET.

I don't use one, but I think it's VERY unlikely. The parallel port JTAG programmers work by direct bit- poking; you'll usually find they come with an access- protection- defeating driver such as giveio, Port95 etc.

You can program the MSP430s using the serial port, but tyhe debugger doesn't work that way, you have to revert to old-fashioned LED blinking, strategically-places printf()s etc.

Paul Burke

Hi Lewin,

That's sad. It probably is not working for the reasons Paul gave. What puzzles me is that TI still sells their MSP430 trial kits with a parallel-only connection with the far end soldered to the proto board. This means a lot of people with laptops can't use them.

Regards, Joerg

Hi Rob,

Thanks. I didn't know that they sell lease returns on EBay. I looked around a bit. Seems like they are mostly close to or past warranty expiration. But it is a bit tedious to find out whether they have a parallel port. When I keyed in the respective service tags it only shows a brief configuration list. With test equipment that's different since I always keep some old HP catalogs ;-)

Regards, Joerg

JTAG

etc.

In theory, the USB devices COULD come with a VDD that would fully virtualize the parallel port to the I/O level. In practice, they don't. It may be that a few such devices do come with fully-implemented drivers, but they certainly don't advertise the feature.

JTAG

etc.

In theory, the USB devices COULD come with a VDD that would fully virtualize the parallel port to the I/O level. In practice, they don't. It may be that a few such devices do come with fully-implemented drivers, but they certainly don't advertise the feature.

JTAG

etc.

In theory, the USB devices COULD come with a VDD that would fully virtualize the parallel port to the I/O level. In practice, they don't. It may be that a few such devices do come with fully-implemented drivers, but they certainly don't advertise the feature.

Hi Lewin,

If they do I wonder why they don't advertise. Besides not being able to run a JTAG programmer like the MSP430 FET on a USB to parallel converter there are going to be lots of folks in much more dire straits: Those with the dreaded dongles, especially on legacy software that for whatever reason needs to be kept going. Those folks might some day be frantically looking for used laptops that still have a real parallel port.

Regards, Joerg