MicroSys SBC1190 Problems

I got one of the SBC1190's off of EBAY from Alltronics:

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It's an embedded PC104 80C188 with 512K Flash & Ram.

The board is as it is, no ROM in U12 socket. (MicroSys website shows a ROM in that socket)

And I'm having trouble with its configuration and startup.

At power-up, the PWR LED blinks, but I'm not getting any response on the PC (hyperterm) its connected thru at COM1.

I called MicroSys and they want $50 for their DK1190 developers kit:

2 cables and the manual!

The 4 page "brochure" on MicroSys' website has the pinouts of the connectors but not the default jumper settings.

I sent their tech support an email today and am waiting for a reply.

Has anyone here got one of these? Alltronics tells me they got them from a bankrupt company as new and "sold about a hundred of them and no one ever reported any trouble"

Reply to
Mike H
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I'm not familiar with the board, but have some guesses in case nobody comes forward with authoritative info.

That would indicate possible lack of an operating system, as you've no doubt conjectured.

It might not be sending anything because it doesn't have a program to tell it to do so.

It might be expecting a program to load into flash. Maybe in intel hex, or trx, or bin or whatever. I didn't read the PDF, it didn't specify? If so, it would probably be fairly stupid, and expect it in one certain format AND NO OTHER, and at some certain bitrate AND NO OTHER. Hopefully your vendor or another developer will come through with some real data, because you'd lose a lot of hair trying every possibility!

Reply to
jcomeau_ictx

Possibly, but the brochure says the OS in in flash, on the bottom of the board. and the socket is for ROM or RAM (user supplied?)

I got an RS232 tester and hooked it up. I am getting a "heartbeat" signal on COM2, but its probably a non-printing character. I get nothing on hyperterm.

Still haven't received any info from MicroSys tech support :(

Reply to
Mike H

If you are getting one character repeated at a fixed interval, I bet you it's actually the start of an XModem session. The unit is begging you for a decent meal of fresh software, and you aren't giving it any, you heartless cad.

Reply to
larwe

Well, if you have a copy of the MicroSys software, I'd be happy to feed it to it.

As my OP stated, I got the board from Alltronics as is. No software, no manual and MicroSys is too $$$ for my budget right now.

Reply to
Mike H

I don't - but I hope you're not believing what Alltronics wrote about "this board will run Linux".

I think you've just had an object lesson in the true meaning of "penny wise, pound foolish", but looking at the datasheet shows that it does indeed have an XModem application loader built in, and it seems to be slightly DOS compatible. The heartbeat character you are seeing is probably , 15H. Given this information and either a terminal program that will display hex or an oscilloscope, you should be able to work out the baud rate in fairly short order. If you send the board a DOS .EXE (use Turbo C or OpenWatcom to build it), the board should run it.

Reply to
larwe

It's like they used to say about newspapers: Don't believe everything you read.

More like Blackjack in Vegas. I got to other PC104 boards off of EBAY, both Octogon products and they work fine. So 2 out of 3 aint bad.

but looking at the datasheet shows that it does

Reply to
Mike H

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