Hi Guys,
After about a year of trying out different hardware, I finally have
a system that does everything I want (except for HMD and onboard
battery charging). These are the components I am using:
- Toshiba PA2487U Li-Ion Battery Packs (3600 mAh)
- Linear Technologies LTC1735 Swithching Power Regulator
- Cell Computing Pentium CardPC 166 Mhz w/64 MB RAM
- Cell Computing "Half Size AT Card with PCMCIA" carrier
- Toshiba HDD2918 6.5 GB 2.5" laptop hard drive
- Diamond Systems Crystal MM-HP PC/104 sound card
- toshiba laptop speakers in jacket collar
- external labtec LVA-7330 microphone
- Proxim Rangelan2 PCMCIA radio modem (pcmcia slot 1)
- Socket Communications PCMCIA serial card (pcmcia slot 2)
- HandyKey Twiddler keyboard/mouse (pcmcia com3 port)
- Ricochet radio modem (com1 port)
- Matrix-Orbital 4x20 VFD display controller (com2 port)
- VFD display in jacket sleeve
- 2x3 matrix membrane keypad in jacket sleeve
- LED indicators in jacket sleeve
- Creative Video Blaster II Webcam (parallel port)
- NetMedia BasicX BX-24 microcontrollers
- Motorola GT Oncore GPS receiver (TTL serial)
- Analog Devices ADXL202 Accelerometers (analog)
- TFT LCD external display (NL6448AC20-06)
A few notes on this configuration:
- Unfortunately the carrier board (half size AT with pcmcia)
is no longer available from cell computing. Nice thing about
this board is that it has dual slots for pcmcia on the main
board. This single board replaces my Mighty Mite carrier
board and Intelec dual pcmcia module. This allows me to
add a PC/104 sound board in approx the same footprint as
my old Mighty Mite based configuration.
- The Crystal-MM sound card was found by probing and auto
configured by sndconfig on redhat linux 6.1.
- The Proxim Rangelan2 drivers work great but require
manual driver installation (not included in kernel).
- I haven't been able to get the Socket Communications Dual
Serial PCMCIA card working (yet), but I was able to get
a Socket Communications single serial port card working.
This was necessary because I lost two serial ports when
I replaced the Mighty Mite. Note that PCMCIA serial
cards are NOT configured directly by "setserial" command,
instead you must specify their attributes in the
/etc/pcmcia/config.opts and /etc/pcmcia/serial.opts.
I configured the IRQ and UART type in these files.
- I have the twiddler working through the PCMCIA serial
card, leaving COM1 and COM2 free on the carrier board.
- The ricochet modem plugs into COM1 on the main board
and is seen as a regular serial modem by linux.
- The matrix-orbital VFD display and keypad interface
currently plugs into COM2 on the main board.
- I still have a problem in that I need another COM
port to interface the microcontrollers (which also
interface the GPS and accelerometers). I am hoping
to get the Socket Communications Dual Serial card
working, which would add COM4 and solve the problem.
If that doesn't work I will change the setup so that
the VFD display/keypad interfaces through the BX-24
microcontrollers along with the GPS etc.
- I had to make a custom cable for interfacing the
NEC TFT display to the carrier board. I was able to
figure this out by perusal of the Cell Computing
and NEC docs. It was tedious and time consuming,
but worth it, the display looks great!
Although no system is perfect, I think that this is
about as close as I'm going to get to what I need by
today's standards. I would of course be happy if these
components were one tenth their size and weight, but
it's manageable.
There are only two other hardware desires I have:
onboard battery charging (with simultaneous use) and
a good high resolution HMD or HUD.
I now have a ton of software and configuration issues
to work through, but I am at least done with the
endless hardware configuration for a while. I am
also installing the new hardware into a new jacket.
-- Doug
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