Re: Mini-ITX, Fanless, 1.2GHz, $65
 

http://www.embeddedarm.com/epc/ts7400-spec-h.htm

Technologic Systems has a few really fun, low-cost, fast-boot options to consider.

Russ

Re: Mini-ITX, Fanless, 1.2GHz, $65
 

I was pretty well uninterested (I did not grow up around Unix/Linux) until someone mentioned DOS. Duh! Should have remembered DOS was an option.

Hmm... 1.5GHz... just DOS and you in the computer... wow that's enough to make you sweat cold. :ahh:

Though... on second thought... you're missing a lot of stuff... like interrupts, hardware timers, CCPs, ADCs, etc... maybe it isn't fantastic as I originally thought.

On second thought, i think I'll stick with my tiDSP board when it comes to doing something nuts with motion control/signal processing/HDMI HDCP stripping/etc.

I guess you all are planning on just slaving the FIRST controller's outputs to the computer via RS-232.

-q

Re: Mini-ITX, Fanless, 1.2GHz, $65
 

There is nothing stopping you from writing hardware drivers for FreeDOS.

Later on in my note I suggested looking at Minix at http://www.minix3.org/. Minix is a small Unix like operating system that would be slightly easier to write drivers for.

In any case the MiniITX board he's got is still a 386 PC at heart, so all of the hardware that we use (Like ADC's and additional timers) isn't really there. They are going to be off board and some software drivers will need to be written. Lots of companies supply Linux drivers, which is why Linux may be the best default choice.

For the boards I linked to, I'm looking at using FreeDOS. I developed DOS drivers, so it is an environment I'm used to. If you look at the FreeDOS source the interrupt handler is going to be able to manage the extra timers with some ease and pass them off to the program.

Granted in FreeDOS you don't really have multitheading / multitasking. If you want that, then either something like Minux, Linux or BSD/Solarias may be a better choice. For real time then FreeRTOS is a good place to start.

On the other hand, it's a 1.5 Ghz machine. So there are cycles to burn.

Re: Mini-ITX, Fanless, 1.2GHz, $65
 

If you don't mind doing some learning and tweaking, you can also google "Linux From Scratch" and build your own highly stripped down linux system so that it only boots and has installed the minimal components that you need on startup(most likely being the kernel and your robot control code, maybe an ssh daemon for easy remote programming along with a few misc things that might be important)

Re: Mini-ITX, Fanless, 1.2GHz, $65
 

http://packages.ubuntu.com/feisty/me...u-minimal.html
44kB

Also, we are currently using a micro-ATX board with an AMD X2 4800+, 1gb of ram and a 8gb solid state drive. All for $200. (for advanced video processing).

And last, boot time doesn't matter. As I understand it the power to the bot is turned on before the match and only the PWM/Relay outputs are disabled.

Re: Mini-ITX, Fanless, 1.2GHz, $65
 

That's not 44KB for a minimal system; that's 44KB for a metapackage of a minimal system -- that is, a list of what ought to be in a minimal Ubuntu installation.

Re: Mini-ITX, Fanless, 1.2GHz, $65
 

I second Minix as well. I remember booting it on an old IBM XT clone way back when... off a 5 1/4" Floppy.

:D

Between FreeDOS and Minix, you'll be able to get to where you need to go.

Re: Mini-ITX, Fanless, 1.2GHz, $65
 

Out team is using a mini-itx board this year as an offboard coprocessor. We tried the gumstix thing but acidentaly destroyed it. Our boot time is about 15 seconds running the base install of debian. We built our code off of the Adambot's coprocessor sollution that was presented at the Novi, MI kickoff in 2007. So far we've had no problems with it other then with the 12vdc to 12vdc convertor one of our mentors brought in to keep the power for it running clean. I must say though, while some people call this overkill, this thing is sweet because we can do all the trig an floating point math we want and we are taking full advantage of it.

-Don

Re: Mini-ITX, Fanless, 1.2GHz, $65
 

True, but the Ubuntu Minimal CD is still 9.1mb :p.

Re: Mini-ITX, Fanless, 1.2GHz, $65
 

Thanks for all of the suggestions. I am downloading minix and ubuntu minimal as I type this. The size of the OS doesn't really matter (It will boot off of a CF card, and they are fairly cheap), its all about speed. If a large OS can boot faster, and maybe not load unnecessary parts/load some parts after it executes my code, it would work.

multithreading isn't really an issue for me at this point in time. If I ever need it, I could always just download linux!

As time moves on, it looks like we won't be having this on our 2008 bot. Even for 2009 (if the RC upgrades are not spectacular), our new drive system (based on bezier curves) is proving to use up much less resources than we once thought. Our computer simulation (in flash) uses nothing more than multiplication, subtraction, and division. Everything can be scaled up to integers, and we probably won't need to rely on that much trig.

Well, this is fascinating nonetheless, and I will continue to try out OSs under virtualization!

EDIT: this is probably a better ubuntu mini link
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/In...tion/MinimalCD