by Is there currently any development effort for the embedded powerpc
families? I saw the corel announcment concerning the ARM port, I have
also seen DEC's work on the itsy board (also an ARM, but palm sized). I
will be getting an MBX board fairly soon, and will be starting work on a
linux port for that for a future embedded product. It seems that an
embedded port requires changes to the I/O structure (to support
execution from ROM, built in peripherals, no paging, and some real time
functions).
The MBX is based on the MPC821 or the MPC860. I am getting an 821.
This has the potential for a PDA flavor of linux in just a few chips.
In fact, Motorola and ADI have announced a palm computer proto card
called the PowerPAQ.
Anyway, the 800 flavor does not have the FPU, but it does have a
comunications coprocessor. The 821 also has a flat panel display
driver, that can drive TFT displays that are fairly large. The 823 adds
USB to the mix.
The MBX has:
PCI, ISA (PC-104+)
SuperIO (IDE, FDD, 16550, lpt, PS-2)
Ethernet (through the Com processor)
PCMCIA (Through the MPC core)
The PCI is supplied via the Tundra chip by QSPAN
The ISA is on an Intel PCI-ISA bridge
Any information/support/leads would be appreciated.
Later,
Joe Julicher