Hello Glen,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> The gnuCsimm Project
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Frankly speaking, I don't see the need for that. Here are the reasons:
1) as far as I am aware of uCsimm design is not closed and the authors
plan to publish the schematics, just not immediately.
2) the schematics is, indeed, really simple (I can say that since my
friends
and I just built a similar board independently and it didn't take
long).
The design is based on openly published sources, like Motorola's
MC68EZ328ADS board schematics and cs8900 data sheet and application
note.
Anyone interested can do it and you can't improve it much -- there
are
just a couple of ways the chips can be connected to each other.
3) While open source is great for software development, I don't think it
is that good for hardware. What I mean is that even after you design
schematics and layout people will still need to manufacture boards
and
solder components on them. I do not think you can easily make a 4-6
layered
PCB at home. Those who can, can probably draw the schematics too :).
What I would propose instead is to put more efforts in uClinux. There
are
a lot of things to do and everyone will benefit.
1) Currently Jeff is working on uClinux source restructuring that will
allow
people to add new target CPU's/platform more easily. What is still
missing
is a smart utility that will be able to generate the initialization
code
and a linker script, based on particular board's schematics (like
which
chip select is used for what, what are the address ranges, etc.).
2) as a generalization of (1) I would recommend to think about how we
can
make "board support packages" for uClinux
3) Many drivers are in experimental state and many more are missing.
E.g.
the realtime clock support or power management for '328 CPUs, as well
as SPI driver.
4) Easy to use, writable, FLASH filesystem
5) A standard bootloader.
6) Lots of apps still have to be ported.
7) Compiler support for shared libraries is missing
I think if we put the existing resources there it will make much more
sense
for the community.
Regards,
Vladimir
--
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Software Engineer | .:|||||||:..:|||||||:. |
NUBU/DIAL | CiscoSystems | e-mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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