PC/104 recommendations

I don't have any direct experience with PC-104 (I think I've been next to one, at a trade show). But there are a number of vendors who advertise in "Circuit Cellar" magazine. You'd be a fool to do so if you didn't want to support a slew of onesie-twosie orders. If you're in the US and can get a copy, take a trip through the ads.

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Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
http://www.wescottdesign.com

Do you need to implement control loops in software?
"Applied Control Theory for Embedded Systems" was written for you.
See details at http://www.wescottdesign.com/actfes/actfes.html

I have used them in the past and, in fact, just had to update some software on such a project early this year. I don't do the purchasing, though. But it was an Ampro board.

The PC/104 is the older ISA based system. PC/104+ is for PCI based systems. There was a bit of a crisis a while back -- the PC/104 was designed to use ISA-based systems back when PCI didn't exist. Then Intel figured out how to get more profit by destroying all the mom and pop mother board makers by creating a new interface that was reflection wave based and cost a fortune to buy tools to validate and required sophisticated knowledge about layout and pretty much killed anyone without a large budget from competing in the space. It worked. Eventually, though, ISA based cpus disappeared completely and worse, later still so did the South Bridge which was the only support for the PCI to ISA that earlier PC/104 requires. With the near complete loss of anything ISA (ISA DMA support was a pain in the PCI-butt, for example, as its requirements were fundamentally incompatible) as the PCI to ISA bridges gradually disappeared (they required side band channels to the PCI/FSB)... PC/104 was in a crisis. The result is PC/104+.

I haven't looked, but I'd bet that PC/104 (non-PCI based) doesn't exist, now. You probably must buy PC/104+. This is a change to the connector, I think, and signalling. Old add-on boards won't work, is my guess.

Jon

I had a pretty good experience with VersaLogic. They've been good about sending out notifications regarding board/bios revisions and warning about upcoming EOL milestones. Currently using their Puma and will be shifting to the Manx on the next spin. Both have compact flash receptacles. I'm running XPe but I'd not expect WinCE to have any problems.

I'd also suggest looking at Ampro (the originators of PC/104). Haven't used them recently but I'd certainly look there for new designs.

PC/104 implements an ISA bus on the stacking connectors. PC/104+ adds a PCI bus, as well. There's also a less frequently seen flavor, PCI/104, that has only the PCI bus.

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Rich Webb     Norfolk, VA

index_ampro.html

Thanks to everyone to the comments so far. At the moment, the SBC communicates with two external devices via two serial ports, so there is no stacking of boards in the prototype design. So it appears that ISA or PCI bus should be a non-issue.

The current environment I use is WinCE 5.0 with embedded Visual C++

4.0. If I want to continue to use this platform for development, as far as I can understand, I need to make sure I get a BSP and a SDK for the PC/104 board. Is there anything else I should look out for?

Is there any reason not to update to WinCE 6.0? I should still be able to use eVC++ 4.0, correct?

Thanks for the vendor recommendations.

Best regards, John D.

You should be fine. A PC/104 or plus is just a small PC in an odd form factor. They typically run fanless and don't have a lot of real estate so expect slower processors (for heat issues) and less memory (just not enough room) than larger form factors.

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Rich Webb     Norfolk, VA

I'm mostly familiar with WinSystems bds. but, you could dig around att eh 'consortium'

and shop all the member manufacturers.

good luck