Goals and Purposes

Philosophical Goal:

Promote the development of Free Hardware Design, along the lines of Free Software.

Practical Goal:

Provide a means for interested hardware and software developers to cooperate in the development of Free Hardware Designs and their associated Free Software.

Existing Projects:

Motorola ColdFire MCF5307 based embedded control boards, to run the uClinux port of GNU/Linux. This is suitable for a reference design for control applications, and can be easily trimmed/extended to handle numerous applications.

Flexible I/O boards for PC-type Computers, and their associated drivers and documentation.

Two designs based on the ISA-bus have been completed. Each design has only one integrated circuit on the board, and the primary difference between them is that one design is made entirely with through-hole parts, and the other utilizes surface-mount parts. It was felt that although the through-hole board is limited in its ultimate capability because of the limited number of pins available, that certain users may not have access to the tools required to handle surface-mount parts. In either case, the single integrated circuit is programmable in-place, the programmed functions may be tailored to developing requirements.

All source code for these boards is being released under the GNU General Public License, including the hardware CAD files, the programming source code for the integrated circuit, and the driver code.

New Projects:

Front Panel Control Board based on the PC/104 form factor, to interface to an instrument control panel.

Future Projects:

There is some interest in developing an in-system-programmable PCI-bus I/O card, but no one has stepped forward to lead that yet. Whatever designs we develop will be released under the GNU General Public License, and we hope that others will find what we do to be useful, and build upon it.