Old News

Hi folks!

16 August 2006

Marty and I are in the process of transitioning FreeIO.org over to my care. I'm more of a software person than a hardware guru like Marty but I maintain a few other websites like robots.net, free3d.org, and the Dallas Personal Robotics Group so handling the website portion of things is right up my alley. Marty continues to have full access to the site and will continue to take part as much as he's able. I don't have any major changes in mind for the immediate future. My main goal is to make sure that Marty's hardware designs continue to be freely available online. Beyond that, I have hopes that we can find volunteers to continue the work on some of the existing projects and maybe get a few new hardware projects started as well. I'm open to any suggestions and comments on the future direction of the website. steve@ncc.com

Changes

15 August 2006

The FreeIO.org site is now being managed by Steve Rainwater, and served from Network Cybernetics Corporation. Marty may come around now and then, as he is able.

Farewell

30 June 2006

Due to pancreatic cancer, Marty will no longer be able to continue developing and releasing new hardware designs on FreeIO.org. The site will be left up, and it should run until the domain registration expires, or the server dies.

Marty (Diehl Martin) has run this site alone since Winter of 2000. He financed all of the projects, and hosted the site at his own expense since then. He has been fighting pancreatic cancer since September of 2004, and the cancer seems to be winning. As such, he is putting his energies elsewhere. For an insight in to what is going on in Marty's life, visit his personal web page at diehlmartin.com/cancer.html.

GNU/Linux Topics Area Added

8 August 2005

I have added an area where various GNU/Linux Topics will be placed. The first of these have to do with installing and running GNU/Linux on a Sun workstation. These industrial-strength systems are available so very inexpensively on the auction sites that it seemed good to show off their easy conversion to running GNU/Linux. Other topics will be added as I get around to writing them up.

Donut USB Interface Development Board Working

11 May 2005

The Donut Board has been assembled and tested with sample firmware, and the board is fully functional. The latest status of the board is in donutnote.htm. We are working to build working code for a full demonstration application of the Donut board, including the firmware as well as the gnu/linux driver code.

Donut USB Interface Development Board

15 April 2005

The first of the promised USB development boards has been released. The Donut Board is designed to be an easily expandable board on which to breadboard USB interfaces, in order to ease the development of USB-based devices. The Donut board is based on the Freescale (formerly Motorola) MC68HC908JB8 microcontroller, which has an integrated USB interface, and into which custom built firmware can be downloaded in order to customize the USB interface to user needs. GNU/Linux-based software to control the USB interface from the PC end of the USB link is also under development, based on the great articles by Greg Kroah-Hartman, published during 2004 in Linux Journal.

Site Changes and Other News

15 April 2005

Marty has finally completed the course of surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy, and once again feels well enough to do development, both of new hardware and also of the FreeIO.org website itself. Site updates are necessary, as links have changed and web standards have evolved. New web development is being done using the nvu tools, which make good clean html which passes the current correctness tests. You may be assured that there will continue to be no flash, java, javascript, or cookies here. Some old pages will remain unchanged for a while, as there is no pressing reason to revisit them for now. The hardware/firmware/software development is far too interesting to spend too much time inhtml development!

One more minor thing is worth mentioning. We have had such abysmal problems with web hosts, that we are how hosting this site internally. It is being served off of an old Sun Ultra-5 running GNU/Linux and Apache, using a business DSL line. Any slowdown you may see is due to DSL bandwidth limiting, as the old 270 MHz Sun running apache/linux can completely fill a 100x faster pipe servingstatic pages like this.

Slow Progress - Marty Has Cancer

19 December 2004

Things have slowed here, not due to a lack of interest, but rather because Marty has spent much of 2004 fighting off an early stage of pancreatic cancer. Earlier this year the surgeons at the University of Alabama, Birmingham (UAB) Hospital performed a Whipple procedure, from which he has pretty much recovered, and now he is undergoing radiation and chemotherapy simultaneously. Once that is complete, more chemtherapy alone is highly probable. Until he recovers, there will likely be little posted here.

FreeIO.org Major Changes

14 January 2004

The focus of this site will transition to strictly I/O projects. Due to the parts costs and logistics involved in developing processor boards, the Toast board will be the last one of those. The next projects will not interface directly to computer internals. The ISA bus is dead, the PCI bus is changing, and choosing any of these limits the target platform to a system which uses them. Thus the next series of projects will interface to something far more common, that being the USB interface. The next series of projects will be small boards to test and develop the USB interface tools required to build larger boards. The intent is to develop a standard drop-in USB interface that I can build upon.

Toast ColdFire Controller Board Developments

26 September 2002

Several developers are working with the FreeIO.org Toast board. The big problem is the difficulty and expense involved with hand building the boards from parts built in small quantities. There are still plans to design a PC/104 form factor version of the Toast board, although this will not be done until there a consensus that the electronic design is completely correct.

Site Changes

26 February 2002

The FreeIO.org site has been moved from Interland to Can-Host.com. Some dns servers have been slow to update, and there may have been a few emails bounced or lost during the changeover. If you have emailed one of us and not received an answer, please resend the email.

Toast ColdFire Controller Board Version 1.01

26 February 2002

Toast version 1.01 is ready for release and will be posted shortly. The only physical change to the board layout is the new footprint for U10, to improve manufacturability. Four of the five boards from the first batch have been sent out to developers and users, and feedback will be incorporated in version 1.02. So far, there have been no schematic changes required.

Toast ColdFire Controller Board Test and Software Progress

14 November 2001

Two prototypes of the Toast ColdFire Control Board have been built, and preliminary hardware tests are complete. The BDM port works and the flash memory can be programmed through that port using the P&E Micro software and BDM cable. The pictures have been updated to show the serial number 2 prototype, which has two ethernet controllers on it. This particular prototype is being sent off this week to Andreas Schuldei who has graciously volunteered to help with porting uClinux to the board. There will be minor changes to the VHDL code appearing this week in order to support two ethernet controllers. The link is on the Toast ColdFire Controller Board page.

Layout/Route of Toast ColdFire Controller Board Released

19 September 2001

The Toast ColdFire Control Board circuit board files have been released. Manufacture of the first articles is under way. The schematic and printed circuit board CAD files are being released for both the GNU/Linux and Wxx platforms using the Eagle 4.03 CAD system. As usual, the design and all of its files are released under GPL. The link is on the Toast ColdFire Controller Board page.

Preliminary Design Files for Toast ColdFire Controller Board Released

04 August 2001

The Toast ColdFire Control Board preliminary design files have been released. This work-in-progress is a control board based on the Motorola MCF5307 ColdFire processor, and includes provisions for up to 4 megabytes of flash memory, 16 megabytes of SDRAM, 10/100BaseT ethernet, two serial ports, real time clock, and a PC/104 expansion bus. The schematic is complete and being reviewed, and the printed circuit board layout has begun.

Design for Juice I/O Cross-Extender Board Released

27 June 2001

The Juice I/O Cross-Extender Board has been released as source and manufacturing files. This board is a cross-extender between the ISA bus and the PC/104 , to allow testing of PC/104 bus boards in a conventional PC. Full design files are provided, along with manufacturing files for the board. The schematic and printed wiring board CAD files are being released for both the GNU/Linux and Wxx platforms using the Eagle 4.03 CAD system. As usual, the design and all of its files are released under GPL. The link is on the Juice I/O Cross-Extender page.

First Article of Grits Programmable I/O Board Built, Pictures Released

18 June 2001

The first article of the Grits Programmable I/O board and the revised version of the Cornbread Programmable I/O board have been built. Pictures are available both on the Board Pictures page and also on the Grits Programmable I/O page.

Design for Grits Programmable I/O Board Released

29 May 2001

The Grits Programmable I/O board has been released as source and manufacturing files. This board is built in the PC/104 embedded computer format. Programmable inputs and outputs are accessed through one or more I/O addresses, and a switchable interrupt is provided. Full design files are provided, along with manufacturing files for the board. The schematic and printed wiring board CAD files are being initially released for the GNU/Linux platform and the Eagle 4.01 CAD system. As usual, the design and all of its files are released under GPL. The link is on the Grits Programmable I/O page.

GNU/Linux Eagle 4.01 CAD Design for Cornbread Board Released

25 May 2001

The Cornbread Board has been updated, and the design brought onto the GNU/Linux platform and the Eagle 4.01 CAD system. Full design files are provided, along with manufacturing files for the board. As usual, the design and all of its files are released under GPL. The link is on the Cornbread Programmable I/O page.

GNU/Linux Driver for Cornbread and Flapjack Boards Released

17 May 2001

Tim Spence has contributed GNU/Linux user space driver code for the Cornbread Board. This code also works for the Flapjack Board, since that is a proper subset of the Cornbread Board. The link is on the I/O GNU/Linux Drivers page. Thanks, Tim!

Biscuit ColdFire Embedded Control Board Processor Type Changed

22 April 2001

After considerable deliberation, it was decided to change the processor for the Biscuit board to a Motorola MCF5272. This device has several devices built in which will simplify use of the processor in embedded "ethernet appliance" applications. The deciding factor was the built in 10/100 Mbs ethernet MAC. The MCF5272 documentation is even more thorough than usual for Motorola.

Snapshot of uClinux/Coldfire Web Site Added

22 April 2001

The Moreton Bay web site has had operating uClinux/ColdFire source and binary for common ColdFire boards for a couple of years. Unfortunately, it is nearly impossible to find since their top level site points to the Lineo main page. We now have a link to it on the Links page, and we have also put up a snapshot of it. We would mirror it except that we do not have such privileges on our server.

Biscuit ColdFire Embedded Control Board Library Files Released

11 January 2001

The first version of the Biscuit ColdFire Embedded Control Board library files have been released. These are specific to the Eagle electronic CAD system, which is being used in this development. The files are available in gzip format for GNU/Linux users, and in zip format for Wxx users, since Eagle will run under both environments. As usual, it is released under GPL.

Next Generation Software Development Unit Design in Progress

09 November 2000

The next big project in work at freeio.org is a Next Generation Software Development Unit. To understand the concept, look here. This is based on the Motorola MCF5307 ColdFire processor, and is being built from the start to run uClinux (look here, here, and here for details) which is a version of GNU/Linux optimized for processors without memory management units, such as the Motorola DragonBall and ColdFire. This unit is being designed to meet one of our contributors needs, and will be easily extendable. As usual, all designs and software will be released under GPL.

Moved Site Maintenance to GNU/Linux Platform

08 November 2000

Wxx is now out of the loop for most activities, and web site development is the latest part to be switched. Further site development will be done with the GNU/Linux platform, using free software for building web pages (Mozilla, at least for now). The only part of the activity which still really requires Wxx is the CPLD/FPGA development, where both Lattice and Xilinx tools are not yet available for GNU/Linux. Pity....

Specification and Schematic Files Added

28 April 2000

The Specification files in Adobe Acrobat format, and the schematic files in HPGL (the most common plotter language) have been added for both the Flapjack and Cornbread boards. HPGL is a vector format which not only provides excellent quality plots on HP and clone plotters, but is also readily imported into many graphics programs.

Flapjack Programmable IO Board Testing Completed

20 April 2000

Testing of the Flapjack board is complete, and all hardware and VHDL has been validated. All functions are working correctly.

Cornbread Programmable IO Board Testing Completed

18 April 2000

Testing of the Cornbread board is complete, and all hardware and VHDL has been validated. All functions are working correctly. The basic_io.c program in the 16-bit section of the I/O Wxx Drivers page has all of the requisite functions to operate the board. The 32-bit drivers are in-work.

Updated Flapjack and Cornbread Programmable Logic VHDL code, released initial 16-bit Wxx test code

15 April 2000

Testing showed that there was an error in the steering logic, which has been fixed in this release. The preliminary 16-bit Wxx test code written in C and compiled with Borland C++ 3.1 is included. The Cornbread board has been tested in write mode, and everything works as designed.

Updated Flapjack and Cornbread IO Card Designs, Added Pictures

28 March 2000

Prototype testing showed that there was an electrical error common to both designs, which has been fixed in this release of both designs. Pictures of the boards have been added to the Pictures page.

Updated Flapjack and Cornbread Programmable Logic VHDL code

20 March 2000

Testing showed that there was an error in the addressing logic, which has been fixed in this release.

Posted Flapjack, Updated Cornbread Programmable IO Card Designs

18 March 2000

The I/O Hardware Design page now has the 03-18-2000 versions of the Flapjack and Cornbread Programmable I/O Card source and manufacturing files.

Posted Cornbread Programmable IO Card Design

11 March 2000

The I/O Hardware Design page now has the 03-11-2000 version of the Cornbread Programmable I/O Card source and manufacturing files.

Web Site Update

08 March 2000

Completed I/O Hardware Designs page, (no links yet).

Web Site Update

07 March 2000

Completed Project Libraries main page.

Web Site Update

05 March 2000

Completed About Free Software page and Goals and Purposes page.

Web Site Update

04 March 2000

Completed About FreeIO.org page and Sponsors page.

Web Site Update

03 March 2000

Basic logical structure of site implemented and uploaded. Content will follow.

Site Initialization

02 March 2000