uCsimm News

The uClinux guys have announced that they are finished testing the uCsimm and are now taking pre-orders. For US$175, you get a SIMM-sized unit with a 16MHz Dragonball processor (the very one used in the Palm Pilots), 2MB of Flash, 8MB of RAM, and integrated 10baseT. Since it can apparently drive a QVGA LCD, I guess it might be good for my fridge? :) uClinux is Linux without an MMU and more info can be found at the uClinux.org site.

I can think of *PLENTY* of things to do with this.

This thing is awesome. I can't wait until they ship, I've placed an order for 2 of them for instant prototype work on some things I've been meaning to work on for years.

The fact that it has built-in ethernet is a *major* plus, in my opinion.

Imagine a small terminal that you can plug into your network and get statistics, information from around your network, instantly.

You don't need your PC to be up and running, you just have this small device sitting on a pedestal on your desk with a 320x200 screen, scrolling information from your network, displaying bar graphs of system activity, etc.

Since it runs Linux, we could build a minimal web server for it, so that you can administer it by sticking it on the network and pointing your browser at it.

I'm going to build something like this when I get my prototype uCSimm boards, and I think I will call it the GeekClock. It'll have a few modes:

Clock mode (dial/digital face, etc)
Netmon interface - display stats from various netmon packages on your different machines.
News scroller - slashdot headlines on your desk!
IRC interface - see who is in your favourite #channel!

etc.

Sort of like a dedicated push client... imho the problem with the whole push phenomenon a few years back was that it required your PC not do much else - if you can have it on your desk and just look at it now and then as you work, it seems to me that this is a better way of doing it.

And since it'll be an Open Source project, we can make the GeekClock totally rock! Got a module you want to write, simply dl the code, add it, and away we go.

This way I can finally turn off all the stuff that runs in the background on my main systems, and I don't need to interrupt what I'm doing to keep an eye on things - the GeekClock stands on its pedestal on my desk, telling me whats going on with my network.

That's just one idea.

Another idea I had was to add a MIDI interface to it, and use it as a MIDI protocol analyzer - since I write music software for a living, this would be useful to me.

I guess the point is that there are a whole bunch of things that I could do with a uCSimm when I get one, and I can't wait!

If anyone is interested in the GeekClock project, don't hesitate to mail me. I'd sure like to colaborate with other people that are interested in putting this nifty device to use...

Re:Awesome!!

The 4004 was the first general application CPU, which was available outside of research laboratories. Intel made it for a japanese calculator company, but it became quite popular as a general CPU for computers, and was used in trafic control systems, and in some of the early NASA deep space probes, where these chips are still in operation, and transmitting data back to earth. (I think it is in the Voyagers, and Mariners.) This was a very slow 100KHZ, and very simple 4-bit CPU. It was fairly quickly superceded by its more powerfull cousing the 8008, which was an 8-bit machine of similar speed. Then came the 8080, which was also 8-bit, but much faster as it raged from 1-MHz to 4-MHz, and later even faster. At this time some people left Intel, and founded Zilog, which had the bestselling Z80, which was a descendant of th 8080, and was much faster, and more versatile, and could go up to 8-MHz. Intel also released the more integrated 8085, which is still used in some embedded applications, but it was overshadowed by Z80 in fame, and speed. Then Intel made a quick hack of a 16-bit CPU called 8086 to beat Motorola, and have the first 16-bit on the market. They meant to phase it out later, but unfortunately IBM adopted a crippled version of it called 8088, which was internally 16-bit, and externally 8-bit. So until today we live with the compromises this hack made to be finished with the design in just 6-weeks. We suffer from the horrible memory model, and other penalties. This model overshadowed the Z80, and its successors 80186, 80286, 80386, 80486, pentium, pentium pro, pentium II, and pentium III are still the mainstream today. They can still run some of the 4004 code if you wanted to, and if you switch them into the basic compatibility mode. The descendants of the Z80 the Z280, and the Z380 haven't done nearly as well, but Zilog is still around manufacturing embedded version of the Z80, which is still used in cars, kitchen appliances, hard drive controllers, and such. They beat Intel at its own game for a while, but the selection of 8088 by IBM over other chips elevated Intel so far, that no one has been able unseat them from the throne. That is not to say that Intel didn't have its own failures. The 80186 was a disaster, and alsmost no one used it as a compoter chip, although it did some business as an embedded processor. The real 16-bit project meant to replace the X86 series, and usher in era of more designer friendlier CPUs was continually delayed, and when it came out it was underwhelming, and never succeded as a general computer CPU, although it has seen some success as embedded processor, and was user as a brain of laser printers until the late 1990s. This was the i960, and i860 series of processors. The merced project is the latest attemp by Intel to get rid off the pupolar bastard X86, but many thing it is doomed to failure like the earlier chips. Only future will show us what will really happen.

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Dallas Semiconductor has TINI

Dallas Semiconductor (the folks who make the Java ring) have a product called TINI [ibutton.com] that puts ethernet and Java into this form factor. (They're working on a single-chip version.)
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sounds good for robots

compared to other micro boards used for robotics:

pros
- low power ussage when idle
- lots of ram (for the size)
- good number of io/ports. good for controlling servo motors and reading digital sensors.
- fairly fast. Probably good enough to do some image processing.
- ethernet useful for fast experimentation in tethered mode.
- nice environment to work in (linux!)

cons
- Needs at least one A/D converter.
- Wireless Ethernet would be more useful. Autonomous robots aren't going to be able to use plain ethernet.