Hawdware for Embedded Controllers?

the_arrow asks: "The company I work for is thinking about updating our control computer to something more modern. Does someone know of a good (and of course cheap) hardware with a small footprint, with at least two serial ports (one of them should be RS422) and an ethernet adapter? It must be able to run Linux. The other question is if we should buy Linux from someone (like Lineo) or try to make our own 'distribution' with our own drivers? The computers will be controlling both airport passenger boarding bridges and aircraft docking guidance systems (and maybe some of the other things we make)."

Comments

Buy education, not an embedded disto

[bgat]

I teach for the Embedded Systems Conference, and there are literally a *ton* of vendors there hawking lots of hardware that appears to fit your requirements. If you can't attend, go to http://www.embedded.com and check out their PC-104 buyer's guides.

I doubt someone like Lineo is going to be value-added for you, because their speciality will be along the lines of extreme kernel mods or getting the kernel running on obscure hardware--- which you can avoid needing if you pick something mainstream like a basic PC-104 setup.

What's left is just application-specific general programming, and Lineo et al won't be any better than you are already for that.

By your question, I suspect that you're new to Linux altogether. Take a course like Red Hat's RHD248 (which I wrote and teach, btw) before you get too far along with your Linux evaluation. Focusing an entire week on embedding GNU, Linux and eCos will set you on the right path faster than $$$ for a Linux disto, and you'll understand more of what's going on to boot.

b.g.