[Gb-ccb] Single board computers with USB 2.0.

[Martin Shepherd]

Since the teleconference yesterday, I have been searching for a
single-board computer (SBC) with a USB 2.0 interface. It turns out
that my belief that USB 2.0 is currently very rare in SBCs, was
correct. I haven't been able to find any PC104 or PC104+ form-factor
boards with USB 2.0. Those PC104+ boards that do have USB interfaces
at all, have USB 1.1.

The only thing close that I found was a sole EBX form-factor board
with USB 2.0, as shown at:

 http://www.commell.com.tw/Product/SBC/LE-362.HTM

  SIZE: 146mm x 101mm  (5.75" x 4.0")
  CPU:  VIA Eden 667MHz or 800MHz CPU
  PSU:  5V (current not specified)
  I/O:  2 USB 2.0 ports, 1 parallel port, 1 RS-232, 2 IDE etc...
  RAM:  Up to 512MB.
  ETH:  10/100 Base Tx.

  A downside of this board, is that it doesn't have standard connectors
  for the I/O ports. Instead it uses headers that would have to be wired
  up to our own standard connectors. This would, in turn, require us
  to provide something to mount these connectors to.

I also found a small number of ETX form-factor SBCs with USB 2.0. At
first sight, these appear to have small form factors, but it turns out
that they are designed to be mounted on ATX size daughter boards, and
thus, again, don't have any of the standard external connectors.

Other than the above SBC from Commel, the only suitable candidate
boards that I found were a couple of Mini-ITX style boards. These are
really designed for small standalone computers, rather than embedded
computers, but are also being used by hobbyists for all kinds of
embedded projects. They include all of the standard connectors on the
board, so they would be more convenient than the EBX board mentioned
above, despite being a bit bigger.

The first one is the Thunderbird from Lippert (a German company).

 http://www.lippert-at.com/index.php?id=21

  SIZE: 170mm x 170mm  (6.7" x 6.7")
  CPU:  Intel Pentium M (900MHz to 1.6GHz)
  PSU:  5V (24.5W at 1.6GHz, 7.0W at 900MHz)
  I/O:  6 USB 2.0 ports, 1 EPP parallel port, 2 RS-232, 2 IDE etc...
  RAM:  Up to 1GB.
  ETH:  100/10 BaseT, 1000 BaseT.

 Note that since this board has 6 USB 2.0 ports (4 of which have
 board-mounted standard USB sockets), we wouldn't need an external USB
 hub.

The other suitable Mini-ITX board that I found was the Envader III
from EEPD (another German company).

  SIZE: 170mm x 170mm  (6.7" x 6.7")
  CPU:  Intel Pentium M (1.1GHz to 1.6GHz)
  PSU:  5V (typical power consumption 17-30W)
  I/O:  4 USB 2.0 ports, 1 EPP parallel port (shared with floppy),
        2 RS-232, 2 IDE, Firewire etc...
  RAM:  Up to 1GB.
  ETH:  10/100 BaseT

There are many other Mini-ITX boards available, and a few have USB 2.0
interfaces, but they tend to have 133MHz CPUs, which I doubt would be
sufficient for our needs. Of the two Mini-ITX boards shown above, the
first (the Thunderbird) seems the more profesional, with a lot of
information available at Lippert's web-site.

In summary, there aren't many options, but if we do go with the
requirement for USB 2.0, my preference would be to get the Lippert
Thunderbird mini-ITX board.

Martin