I demonstrated multiple stepper motor control under RT-Linux at last year's
German Linux conference. That used a standard digital i/o card. Work I'm doing
at the JET fusion research centre has introduced me to the wonders of
In System Programmable (ISP) logic (particularly Lattice CPLDs). I'm thinking
about a PCI card for my hexapod machine project, giving step and direction
outputs and quadrature encoder inputs for up to 6 stepper motors. The PCI bus
interface logic will be in a CPLD (Lattice provide VHDL code for this), the
application logic (also programmed in VHDL) in another. ISP devices are usually
programmed via a parallel port cable (standard 5v logic) plugging into a small
board connector, but I understand this can also be done through a bus with
appropriate decoding. With these devices the boundary between software and
digital hardware is pushed a long way sideways. Add open source (freely
available schematics, pcb layouts, VHDL programs) and things get even more
interesting. A single card can be reprogrammed to have many different functions.
Anyone on the RT-Linux list, or working with CPLDs or interested in this?
Anyone care to help?
John
--
John Storrs, Laboratory for Micro Enterprise
125 Culham 1 Site, Culham, Abingdon OX14 3DA, UK
tel/fax 01865 407085 email [EMAIL PROTECTED]
www http://www.i-way.co.uk/~storrs
--- [rtl] ---
To unsubscribe:
echo "unsubscribe rtl" | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] OR
echo "unsubscribe rtl <Your_email>" | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
----
For more information on Real-Time Linux see:
http://www.rtlinux.org/~rtlinux/
