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

[Martin Shepherd]

On Thu, 19 Feb 2004, John Ford wrote:
> This is not really a problem, as we have to use RFI connectors on
> there anyway.

I'm missing something here. Are you thinking of putting the computer
in its own box? I was assuming that in Randy's new configuration, this
box would be dropped, since the analog boards are already hidden from
it within 2 nested shielded boxes.

> http://www.mycomp.com.tw/Products/embedded/EB5-240.htm is another
> one.  It has 4 usb 4.0 ports, 4 serial ports, Ethernet, etc.  It also
> has the VIA low-power cpu.

The problem with this board, and the other 5.25" form-factor boards
that you mentioned is that this form factor actually measures 8" x
5.74", which I thought would be too large. Plus they tend to have
rather high power consumptions, and would thus not only require bigger
power-supplies, but also better cooling. For this particular board,
the data-sheet doesn't say anything more about the power requirements
than that it needs an ATX power supply. The Advantech board apparently
takes 5V 10A max, and 5V 6A typical. The ICP board takes 5V 4.2A, 12V
4.85A. Finally, the Emac board takes 5V 10A, 12V 1A max, and 5V 5.6A,
12V 0.17A typical.

> (I suppose if we had 4 separate usb ports, we would not need USB 2.0, no?)

This depends on whether the 4 ports are going through an on-board hub,
partioning the limited USB 1.1 bandwidth between them.

> Sounds fine.  It may come down to price.  We'll need 3 or 4 of them.
> Do any of these companies provide a Linux port?  emac does, and
> possibly ampro

The Mini-ITX boards are popular in the Linux community, and they tend
to use fairely standard components, so I doubt that there are many of
them that aren't supported by standard linux distributions. For
example, the Thunderbird data-sheet lists Linux as a supported OS, and
there is a January linux-devices article about it, at

 http://www.linuxdevices.com/articles/AT5006522831.html

describing how to install Debian on it. Right now linuxdevices.com
appears to be down (this is unusual), but you can read the article
from google's cache, at

http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:vQ3TnXYq_BwJ:www.linuxdevices.com/articles/AT5006522831.html+thunderbird+linux+lippert&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

Martin