Salt Lake City, UT — (press release excerpt) — SnapGear Inc. has developed a new Linux-based reference platform that brings together USB, PCMCIA, WAN, LAN, and serial connectivity in a single powerful appliance design.

The highly integrated and compact (9.1 x 5.5 in.) single-board reference platform, known as the SE2900, is based on an AMD SC520 processor running at 133MHz. Powered by the Linux 2.4.10 kernel, the board can be configured with 8MB or 16MB of Flash, 1MB of Boot Flash, and 64MB of SDRAM. For I/O, the board offers two 10/100BaseT Ethernet ports, two OHCI compliant USB host ports, and an RS232 port. The PCMCIA slot works with traditional 16-bit PC Cards as well as the 32-bit 33 MHz CardBus, accomodating Type I/II/III PCMCIA cards. The board also has JTAG interface support primarily intended for AMD's JTAG software debugger.

Chief Software Wizard Greg Ungerer said “basic board bring-up only took a day or so and we were able to use standard kernel drivers so it was largely just a configuration issue. Then we really needed a way of demonstrating the versatility of the board and that's where we had some fun.” Using a regular USB camera, PCMCIA wireless LAN card, and standard Linux tools, the unit was quickly set up as a mobile, streaming-video web server.

“We just attached a battery to it and walked around outside the building while friends and co-workers watched through their desktop web browsers,” added Ungerer. “Next time we'll add a USB audio input source to the other USB port and we can give walking tours of the area to people over the Internet!”

The board presented considerable design challenges in being able to integrate so many PCI devices cleanly and in a small form factor.

 
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