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From: farnham@lmsc.lockheed.com (Greg Farnham)
Subject: Embedded Controller Conference Summary
Message-ID: <farnham-100694180300@129.197.52.35>
Followup-To: comp.robotics
Sender: news@butch.lmsc.lockheed.com
Organization: CIEM
Date: Sat, 11 Jun 1994 01:00:21 GMT
Lines: 74

Embedded Computer Conference & Exposition Summary

Here is a summary of ECC.   It was held 6/8 thru 6/10 at the Santa Clara
Convention Center in Santa Clara, California.   This summary focuses on 
small Single Board Computers (SBCs) that could be used in mobile robots. 
Unfortunately most of the products and development systems are out of the
hobbyist price range.  A development system and sample product for many of
the products would be about $2,000.

One interesting standard that several vendors were supporting is the PC/104
bus.  My understanding is that this has the same I/O lines as the ISA or
EISA Bus except its physically different.  Looks like a header with .1"
spacing.  The idea is that you can stack several small (4"x4") boards on
top of each other.  They put a male connector on the bottom and a femal
connector on the top.  A lot of the SBCs are 386's with DOS in ROM, on
board SVGA etc.

Here are some examples

PC/II+ from Megatel (CANADA) (416) 245-2953
- 4"x4"
- Intel 386SL 25MHz
-SVGA on board supports LCD
SCSI & CMOS Floppy Disk Controllers
- Ethernet LAN
- Up to 2.25MBytes Flash
- 5 watts
- Serial, Parallel & Keyboard ports
- AT BIOS
- Up to 10Mbyte User DRAM
- PC/104 Bus Compatible option

4010 SBC from MicroPC
- In the 4"x4" range
- Instant DOS 5.0 operation
- 2 solid-state disks
- Flash EPROM programmer
- 2MB Dram
- Com1 and Com2 serial ports
- LPT1 parallel port
- Dual floppy disk port
- Hard disk port
- Keyboard/speaker ports
- Calendar/clock
- Watchdog timer
- Stand Alone or ISA bus
- PC/104 Bus Compatible 

Other small PC compatibles:

CARDIO 386 a SEIKO product marketed by S-MOS and EPSON
SMOS (408) 922-0200
This one is real small  85.6mmx54mmx5.5mm
-Intel 386
-VGA, LCD
- Parallel Port
- Serial Ports
- Keyboard Interface PS/2
- 1,2 or 4MB RAM
- 128 or 256K ROM
- Drive Controller

E.S.P. AT Processor Module from Dovatron (303) 772-5933
This one is also real small 1.7"x5.2"
- Lots of on board stuff

- Motorola was not there

- Digital Equipment was there pushing their Alpha AXP VME bus Boards. 
800-AXP-4VME.  They don't really apply to my application.

Lots of neat small PC compatibles, but expensive.
Greg Farnham
farnham@lmsc.lockheed.com
