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[ts-7000] Re: Selecting an SBC

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Subject: [ts-7000] Re: Selecting an SBC
From: "Rod" <>
Date: Thu, 12 Aug 2010 16:02:43 -0000

--- In  Camilo Polymeris <> wrote:
>
> Hi, some basic questions:
> 
> I am undecided as to which of TS' SBCs is the most suited to my project.
> I need:
> * PC/104 interface to connect to data adquisition boards. I will need
> anything between 16 to 64 channels of 2kHz 12 bit analog inputs. I think
> 1 to 3 TS-ADC24s will suit my needs.
> * Internal storage for about 1GB of data (any media)
> * Ethernet
> * Text LCD & keypad/keyboard interface
> * Cost is an important factor
> 
> I think the TS-7200 or TS-7350 could be what I am looking for. I am not
> sure what the TS-7350 advantages are, given that it is slightly more
> expensive and seems does not support LCDs out-of-the box. Does the FPGA
> take load off the processor while interfacing with the PC/104
> peripherals like the ADC24? Or what is the advantage of it?
> Which other boards, TS' or others, would you recommend, considering the
> above requirements?
> 
> Thanks a lot,
> Camilo
>

I have been working with the 7350 as a background task for a year or so, more 
intensively of late. I don't have any big issue with the board, per se, except 
for the need to use the console serial adapter (TS-9445). I have a group of 
hardware people to work with, so we've developed our own version, and it will 
package more nicely for cases where it has to be part of a product. I'd really 
like to understand why it is necessary, though. I tried booting a kernel with 
ttyS1 specified as the console, and it starts out emitting console messages to 
that port, but stops part way through booting.
A couple of other issues that have bugged me are that the 7350 seems to be 
somewhat of an orphan product within the TS ARM products. It uses a 2.6 kernel, 
and some things that work with other products do not work with the 7350, such 
as the linux-boots-linux scheme (despite what the 7350 documentation online 
says), and which I had planned somewhat heavily on using. Also, the manner of 
creating a SD flash module with modified kernels or other changes is clumsy. 
Some of the partitions on the SD flash do not contain filesystems, so changing 
the contents is not as simple as copying files. The partitioning scheme used 
completely confounds my fdisk (RHEL5), and I had to add JFS filesystem support 
to my development host kernel (not TS's fault, though; RH isn't the ideal 
cross-development platform). 
A lot of the TS website's documentation seems to be generic, with the board 
model number changed for each board description, but not all of it actually 
applies to the 7350. Documentation with the TS-CAN1 board was incompatible with 
the TS-7350, and it took an exchange of e-mails with their technical support to 
sort it out (and it did get sorted out). Sadly, that's where I found out that 
the 7350 can't boot linux from linux.
So far, I am progressing, although everything seems to take more effort than I 
had hoped for. 
   ---   rod.






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