This is my first question to the general list---please be gentle ;)
We have been doing iBOB<->iBOB and iBOB<->BEE2 fast serial communications using cables made by Fujitsu. Typically we keep the cable lengths quite short, a typical Fujitsu part number for a 1 m cable is FCD-ZZ00016, it's sold as Infiniband. The link seems to be pretty robust with the short cables, and it seems that inserting a 3 m cable doesn't really seem to give us trouble, on the bench anyhow. In the field it should be ok for us to use the 1 m cables primarily. Note that our system does not include a switch and the protocol we are using is low level, simply XAUI point-to-point.
I have a little year end money to spend stocking up on cables. I have been reading discussions on this list and overheard conversations at the workshop regarding fiber optic versions of these cables, which I think go with add-on transmitter-receivers to connect to the copper- based CX4 board connectors. These discussions typically referred to unreliability of the copper link under some circumstances, and again we do not seem to have experienced that problem here. It is possible that many of these discussions were in the context of systems which need a fast off-the-shelf F/O switch. There was some discussion as to whether power is available on CASPER CX-4 pins to run the F/O modules.
Can someone please offer a current summary of where things stand in this area, and perhaps an assessment based on my summary above, whether it is worthwhile to purchase a F/O set to experiment with. Is there a turnkey source for the necessary components and cables?
(I have re-read a prior thread from early May on this topic involving John, Matt, Jouko, and Francois, however the sourcing information was from 2005, and the applicability of the information to our situation was not entirely clear from the conversation. Also perhaps more has been learned since May.)
Thanks for shedding light on this. Jonathan
