Does anybody know of any good PCI bus controllers that are suitable for use hobby boards. I've been thinking about designing a fully fledged PC using a ColdFire chip with SDRAM, PCI, USB and IDE. Getting Linux up and running shouldn't be a problem if I use common USB and PCI chips. Any suggestions and sources for nice PCI bus controllers?
Dave
Good luck. It's almost impossible to find these devices in anything but BGA packages, which are not very hobbyist friendly. I would start with PLX Tech.
Dave Rooney
"David Huseby" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@corp.supernews.com:
Why not step up just a bit to the IBM 405 series. They have built a in SDRAM controller, PCI bridge, external bus for connecting to simple devices like FLASH, SRAM, etc. all on the CPU itself. Look for a 405 based SBC and see what it comes with.
-- - Mark -> --
Interesting. Thanks for the suggestion.
Dave
That's what I was afraid of. I wish there were more hobby friendly parts out there. I guess that's why so many hobby projects these days are done with FPGA's. You can build an FPGA board and then implement the chip that you need. I think I'll just be satisfied with an IDE interface which I can put directly on the ColdFire bus, memory mapped. That way I could at least run uCLinux with ext2 support and have a real file system.
Dave
Also check out the IBM 440EP - a successor to the 405, and has 2 USB ports and dual 10/100 ethernet. We're going to be using that for our next product @ work.
-->Neil
I suspect it's PCI itself that is imposing the limits to hobbyist-friendliness here. While it may be possible to match all its gazillions of specific requirements on a hobbyist project, it'll quite possibly not worth the effort of trying. To put it bluntly: how were you expecting to squeeze 100+ pins out of the footprint area of a manually solderable part?
-- Hans-Bernhard Broeker (broeker@physik.rwth-aachen.de) Even if all the snow were burnt, ashes would remain.
"Neil Bradley" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@corp.supernews.com:
Indeed a much nicer series, the 440, but I was concerned it may be more expensive than the older 405 series. Remember, AMCC now owns the rights to the ppc4xx family.
-- - Mark -> --
A nice PLCC package would do.
Dave
IDE works fine with the ColdFire. Make sure to access all locations but DataPort in PIO-0 mode. Interrupt needs pullup and be positive edge triggered. Otherwise you will get trouble with some drives. This can be combined with DMA easily.
For PCI you need a "Host Bridge". This bridge is able to do IDSEL access. No peripheral bridge is able to do this.
Regards Thomas
IDE works fine with the ColdFire. Make sure to access all locations but DataPort in PIO-0 mode. Interrupt needs pullup and be positive edge triggered. Otherwise you will get trouble with some drives. This can be combined with DMA easily.
For PCI you need a "Host Bridge". This bridge is able to do IDSEL access. No peripheral bridge is able to do this.
Regards Thomas
ElectronDepot website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.