LART StrongARM development kits available
LART StrongARM development kits available
The LART board featured recently on debian-news
( http://www.debian.org/News/2000/20001123 )
The LART is a great Open Hardware project to make high-performance, low
power, physically tiny computing platforms available to anyone who
wants to
develop something interesting. The Developers had wearable computing and
virtual reality in mind when they started the project, but LARTs are
useful
for wide range of tasks: a general development platform, ARM compile
farm,
process monitoring, robotics, race car telemtry, PDA development and so
on.
Depending on how barmy you like your ideas the list can be endless. The
fact
that all the hardware info is provided with the device as well as a
licence
to make your own, means that if you want to take it on to a manufactured
product you can do so entirely on your own if you like, making any
changes
you fancy first.
The LART is also home-manufacturable, but in practice it turned out to
be
hard to get many of the parts in ones and twos, if at all. So Aleph
One, a
company specializing in ARM Linux products using Debian, got together
with
Remote 12 Systems and built a batch of LARTs. We have also written a
book to
cover ARM Linux development with Debian/Emdebian, especially on such
small
portable systems, and done a variant Debian-ARM distribution to go with
it.
All this is now available from Aleph One. We'd like to see Open Hardware
become as powerful an idea as Open Software, and we have plans for
further
developments along these lines. If you like the idea too, please join
in and
'start with a LART'.
Details of the LART dev kit are available here:
http://www.aleph1.co.uk/armlinux/LART/
and the LART project here:
http://www.lart.tudelft.nl/
A summary of the LART dev kit is:
* 200Mhz StrongARM, 32MB RAM, 4MB flash (assembled, tested, bootloader
loaded)
* 7.5cm x 10cm (3" x 4")
* 0.6W power consumption
* stackable expansion boards
* 16W PSU
* 4-10V (or 4-16V) input voltage
* 2 serial ports
* high speed expansion bus
* low speed expansion bus
* JTAG port
* Full Debian-ARM binary+source distribution + kernels ramdisks and
hardware
release for LART
* ARMLinux for Developers Guide
* JTAG->parallel dongle board
* Serial, power and JTAG cables
The cost including postage is:
Overseas: GBP 425, USD 638, E 680
In the EU: GBP 423, USD 635, E 677
In the UK: GBP 495 inc VAT, USD ~750, E 790
The associated KSB (Kitchen Sink Board) full of IO (IDE/ATA, PS2 x2,
USB,
IrDa, POTS, video, touchscreen, Stereo audio, mono audio, ethernet
slot) and
the ethernet card to go in the slot are being produced now and will be
available shortly.
-----------------------------
As this is our first posting here I'll give a little background on
Aleph One
too. We've been involved with ARM CPUs one way or another for about 13
years,
starting with ARM2-ARM3 upgrades for Acorn Archimedes machines back in
the
1980's. For the last 2 years we have been working on ARMLinux, initially
releasing the existing Redhat-based aout distribution for RiscPCs (as
that
was all that was functioning), whilst doing our bit to make the
Debian-ARM
port suitable for RISCOS machines as well as Netwinders. That was
released in
December 2000 ( http://www.aleph1.co.uk/armlinux/riscos/index.html ).
We are trying to spread Debian-ARM to more users by making it easy for
them,
and to make a living adding value and services to the basic
distribution.
That means offering everything from an online boot-floppies followed by
online install for people who know what they are doing, thtough the
official
Debian-ARM CDs, our modified CDs and Guide, to pre-installed Hard
Drives or
even a 'give us your machine and we'll do it for you' service.
Having done this for RISC OS users, we'd now like to spread the word for
other ARM devices - which are mostly PDAs (like the Psion 5 and 7)
series and
the iPAQ, and embedded and development devices like the LART, Assabet
and
so-on. I hope to be able to use the emdebian project to make a Debian
distribution suitable for small devices and PDAs, but retaining the
good bits
of Debian. So far it's proving something of a struggle making a living
at
this, but I have become a committed Debian developer along the way, and
it's
great fun :-)
Wookey
--
Aleph One Ltd, Bottisham, CAMBRIDGE, CB5 9BA, UK Tel (00 44) 1223
811679
work: http://www.aleph1.co.uk/ play: http://www.chaos.org.uk/~wookey
/
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