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PC/104 Embedded Consortium Design Winners
An anonymous reader writes "The PC/104 Embedded Consortium announced the winners of its first PC/104 Design Contest, at the Embedded Systems Conference today in San Francisco. The awards recognize engineers designing innovative systems and devices based on the consortium's PC/104 and PC/104-Plus standards. Winners were announced in three categories: Commercial for industrial/medical/transportation/other; Commercial for military/aerospace/COTS; and Research Project. Read the full story at Linuxdevices.com. Lots of images!"
Does this mean full sized keyboards on laptops, numpad and all?
:)
Kickass!
Go calculate something
Does anyone else feel that it's strange how a website that claims to be all about NEWS for nerds, and spends so much time writing about Microsoft and other technology releases, failed to report on the launch of Windows 2003? Surely there will be a slew of articles bashing it in the coming months, but it would lend to the credibility of Slashdot if you were to at least post an article about the launch of the new target for future scorn.
Top prize went to a PC which... controls glue guns? Why does this not seem like a high caliber of utility that you should be able to provide with that much computing power.
Top research prize went to a steer by wire system. This is already employed in race cars and ferrari's alike. How is something already in production considered research?
Maybe I am out of touch with the embedded niche, but this seems totally anti-clamictic and a little lame
Deal with it. A large portion of Comp. Sci research that leads to such great products such as: GPS, WiFi and Ethernet all were supported by DARPA and other defense releated government research organizations.
These are very useful systems in confined space and need for solid-state development.
:)
Only problem I've ever had designing something with them, depending of course on the manufacturer who supplies stacks and hd/OS, accessing it from another system or adding external hardware to it. Very embedded. But that's the point
can be found Here Promises to be an interesting standard.
I'm not Seth.
PC 104 is basically a form factor, just like ATX, mini-ATX, mini-ITX, etc. It is one of the smallest form factor out there, largely used in industrial automation setup.
The one characteristic that makes PC104 interesting is the "pass through" bus connector. Consisting of 104 pins (hence it's name), you stack modules of extension card on the base board, and build vertically your components. See link:
PC104 FAQ with pictures
They tend to be pretty low power consumption, and there are a mind boggling array of PC104 modules out there, from radio modems to GPS receivers to servo controllers and 3 axis accelerometers. For hobby use, I wouldn't really go with them, since they are more expensive than the much cheaper mini-itx boards (which is what I will be using for my next car computer).
Mini-ITX info link
Man, reading through the projects - they outfitted a 1997 Corvette with a "fly by wire" steering. My god, I wish my research lab has the amount of cash handy to buy a corvette for a ressearch project...
-=- Terence
They don't state that that particular project utilizes linux, it simply uses the PC/104 standard for *hardware*. PC/104 is a hardware spec not a software spec.
I am just glad to see that US Nuclear Submarines are not running Windows!
Just imagine, the nuclear weapon officer's screen lighting up the conn (a sub's control room) with a blue glow.. not pretty...
From the article...
"Its operator interface consists of a quarter-VGA color LCD with a touch screen, driven by a 486 single board computer running Windows CE."
I was hopeing to find some of the winners using Linux, but the only mention of OS in the article was Windows CE.
Whatever works for each individual application I guess!
~Z
Sounds like a /.ing challenge!
ok, seriuosly, you could create an interesting parallel processing computer in a very small stack from these things, and I've seen some with quite reasonable performance...
something for me to mess with when I win the lottery... until then, I'll stick with the cluster of amazing junk I currently use...
Enjoy
On Arrakis: early worm gets the bird. Magister mundi sum!
I've never had any kind of interest in PC/104.. it's an old standard, the PC/104 pass-through bus is ISA based. Every time I try and find out prices, it's been $400-500 for a devel board, no one seems to think about selling them in small quantities. You only get a 33mhz 486 for that $400 board..
I have recently come to enjoy working with Soekris boards.. http://www.soekris.com
The guy does things right.. Compact flash slots on board for OS, no over-priced Disk-On-Chip stuff. PCI or mini-pci slots, 133mhz AMD Elan chips, PCMCIA slots on some models.. serial port and simple network bootable flash. and 2-3 PCI 10/100 ethernet chips.. a similar PC/104 board would be stacked 4cm tall with adapter boards, all stuck on a ISA bus.
Who cares baout pc/104? It seems more like an excuse to put pins instead of pci slots, and then throw on a $400 price tag and charge at least $100 for every perphipherial you could want.
PC/104 sounded like an embedded dream when i heard about it. Its still one i'm not rich enough to afford.
DOES IT RUN LINUX????
For example, the Prometheus . It's a 100MHz 486 w/ tons of standard PC components all on a single PC/104 board, *including* a full featured data acquisision circuit and complete linux support. The model w/o data acquision goes for approx $250, which is comparable to the model you linked to.
Woo-hoo!
I was going to use PC104 to build a computer for my car. They're perfect because of their size and low power, but it's almost as simple these days to get a mini-itx board and do it that way. I ended up going with an old 486, but i'm hoping to rebuild the project... mp3car has a lot of projects like this, a few use PC104
Wouldn't water be a bigger hazard on a sub than hammers?
*ducking hammer blows from those who take this post seriously*
Harpo Tunnel Syndrome--my wrist feels funny.
Do you work in industry? I don't mean the IT industry, but some branch of manufacturing?
Modern manufacturing plants are extensively automated. Logic control 30 years ago was all done with hardwired relays and timers, then 20 years ago with programmable logic controllers (PLC's), and now there are virtual PLC's running in x86-based PC's with extensive networking between controllers. There are DSP's in sensors, web guides, vision systems, and even glue gun controls. Technology has driven production speeds higher and higher, and now we need more sophisticated control systems on all sorts of equipment.
and not a keyboard. But its neat because one can stack them and add more functionality so the pc's turn out like a cube.
A while ago I got the bug to design an MP3 player for my car, and needed some embedded hardware for it (unfortunately this happened right before I moved back accross the US, and I lost interest after that, what with work an' all). I ended up picking up a buscuit PC board from www.advantech.com. It was like $500 at the time, but had everything on it -- audio, ethernet, IDE, floppy, VGA, LCD, a bunch of serial ports, and a PC/104 port that I intended to use for a PCMCIA adapter (wireless support).
These things are cool. You could literally build one into a 5.25" disk enclosure, and it would fit perfectly (even uses the right power connector). If you want something that doesn't have the mess of an ATX power supply and slots that make the cards stick out, PC/104-based solutions are ideal -- it's a nice, clean stack.
Advantech also now manufactures a StrongARM-based solution, which I'm thinking about picking up for a revived version of the project. I think they've also got XScale-based boards.
--ZS
-- sigs cause cancer.
Similarly, while PC/104 is not new, fast, or high powered, it is stable, robust, and everyone knows it.
Oh, and one of the reasons that 33mhz 486s are used is because they can handle hot environments without melting down. What would happen if you put an Athlon or P4 in an unventilated cabinet in a plating shop in Oklahoma in August? 100 degrees F on the outside of the cabinet.
Another reason for high cost of PC/104 is robustness. How well does the Soekris board handle vibration? Will the CF chip wiggle its way out of the slot? These are used in systems that have to have near-mainframe reliability. If the system crashes (sometimes literally, if it's an automated multiple-hoist line) due to a hardware failure, with a millionm dollars worth of product in the line, there will be a technician on an airplane that day. A stable, robust, PC/104 board is a hell of a lot cheaper than that!
Best Slashdot Co
Links doesn't care.
Flamebait? Bunch of psychotic fucks.... I hope I can find this one in metamod.