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In the 'bigger chip' category... Coldfires are fun. (Strong)ARMs are popular. Embedded PowerPC is more prevalent than you'd think. MIPS makes a showing in various guises. 486s and Geodes are great fun for some.

And SuperH seems to go overlooked, though it did crop up in the Dreamcast. Here's one 'DIY' project that used it:

http://www.azpower.com/mylinux/
And the guy explained why he liked it:
http://www.azpower.com/mylinux/why_superh.html
He also shows how FPGAs can be used. What ever happened to that project!? I wanted one!

It does seem like GCC for SH has been a bit.. 'variable' or 'neglected' of late. But now that the 3.x branch has settled, I gather it's improving/seeing maintainership again.

The Kaii - http://kaii.info/ was supposed to have been another SuperH design, but I haven't heard a peep about it, either. (They wanted to design SH boards in appropriate form-factors, port the OpenPDA platform of the Zaurus and friends to it, and license their designs to manufacturers cheap. I assume they were stymied by some of GCC's unsettledness.)

Meanwhile, if you want to start by 'reverse-engineering' an existing design, the "CommodoreOne" will be a well-documented design when it's finally released, also using FPGAs to good effect. Sadly, the project pages are perpetually down at the moment (unless someone knows where they've moved), but it's a simple uATX board, and will be produced/sold by Individual Computer - http://jschoenfeld.de/indexe.htm" - when they finally get things straightened out. Google may help if you care. There's another (unrelated) project out there for a similar but simpler design meant to resemble early arcade or home game systems' boards, but sadly, I can't remember the name of it.

In the 'bigger chip' category... Coldfires are fun. (Strong)ARMs are popular. Embedded PowerPC is more prevalent than you'd think. MIPS makes a showing in various guises. 486s and Geodes are great fun for some.

And SuperH seems to go overlooked, though it did crop up in the Dreamcast. Here's one 'DIY' project that used it:

http://www.azpower.com/mylinux/
And the guy explained why he liked it:
http://www.azpower.com/mylinux/why_superh.html
He also shows how FPGAs can be used. What ever happened to that project!? I wanted one!

It does seem like GCC for SH has been a bit.. 'variable' or 'neglected' of late. But now that the 3.x branch has settled, I gather it's improving/seeing maintainership again.

The Kaii - http://kaii.info/ was supposed to have been another SuperH design, but I haven't heard a peep about it, either. (They wanted to design SH boards in appropriate form-factors, port the OpenPDA platform of the Zaurus and friends to it, and license their designs to manufacturers cheap. I assume they were stymied by some of GCC's unsettledness.)

Meanwhile, if you want to start by 'reverse-engineering' an existing design, the "CommodoreOne" will be a well-documented design when it's finally released, also using FPGAs to good effect. Sadly, the project pages are perpetually down at the moment (unless someone knows where they've moved), but it's a simple uATX board, and will be produced/sold by Individual Computer - http://jschoenfeld.de/indexe.htm" - when they finally get things straightened out. Google may help if you care. There's another (unrelated) project out there for a similar but simpler design meant to resemble early arcade or home game systems' boards, but sadly, I can't remember the name of it.

Maybe the same way copyright inspired copyleft, the DMCA is a form for companies to protect their products, and stop other people from profiting on those products (god forbid!), but since this really throws onto the pile, and adds hardware materials in to the copyright bin, maybe it will inspire some hardware enthousiasts to create copylefted hardware?

There's already a couple projects with exactly that in mind:

• OpenBIOS
• MyLinux PLW (Pocket Linux Workstation) (i.e., open Palm-like hardware for running Linux on, which they plan to sell for $20 above cost)
• LinuxBIOS
• The Open Hardware Certification Program
• OpenCores (for open-sourced processor designs)
• and finally a page dedicated to Writings on Open Source Hardware.

It's interesting to note that the OpenBIOS project was a recipient of funding from LinuxFund .

At our last meeting, a couple of cool folks from BlueMug in Berkeley came and talked about an embedded Linux prototype they built for a client (photos). Their presentation slide is also online here (2MB PDF).

At the meeting before that, Rob Wehrli of Arizona Cooperative Power came to talk about Clinux (photos). His presentation is online, too.

Enjoy!

At our last meeting, a couple of cool folks from BlueMug in Berkeley came and talked about an embedded Linux prototype they built for a client (photos). Their presentation slide is also online here (2MB PDF).

At the meeting before that, Rob Wehrli of Arizona Cooperative Power came to talk about Clinux (photos). His presentation is online, too.

Enjoy!

http://mylinux.sourceforge.net/ and http://www.azpower.com/mylinux/

MyLinux PLW project

-John

Only money will get the Linux PDA's out there - Wrong.