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RE: ZF Microsystems MachZ

From: "Mostrom, Edward" <>
Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2000 09:05:21 -0600

>>>
>>> Price: "as low as" $50.  Probably bulk rate of course.  Double for small
>>> batches, maybe?  Beats me.
>>>EMJ has the chip by itself for $82. EMJ also sells it with the
development
>>>board for $841. I would like to know the size of the dev board, but I'm
>>>having problems communicating w/ ZFMicro. Someone please help here (but
be
>>>very careful how you approach them!

>>>The MachZ isn't a processor. It's a 35mm x 35mm x86 motherboard. It's
core
>>>is a 32bit 586 processor with "full floating point capability." It
>>>features "traditional PC hardware features including PCI, ISA and Access
>>>(I2C) buses, serial and parallel I/O, floppy and hard disk controllers;"
>>>an SDRAM controller for a maximum of 256MB; and two independent USB
>>>interfaces.

>>If everything needed is on the chip, why is the dev board $841?

>I have the data book (500+ pages) on the MachZ.

>The dev. board appears to be over priced to me too, but based upon how many
>dev. boards they will ever sell and the fact that they include the break
out
>of all the buses (PCI/PC104/USB/IDE/ect...), 8 MB of memory, etc.. then it
>is not that bad.

>-bob

I guess I don't understand.  If the chip provides basically a complete
motherboard,
it would seem to be cheaper to just build my own.  Maybe I am just a tad
nieve; but if
someone says that their chip provides USB, IDE, keyboard, mouse, ... then I
would assume
that I don't have to do anything other than drag the traces from those pins
on the chip
out to the header to connect my cable to.  Is that right or is there
something I would have
to do between the pins and the cable?

I would assume that it is the same for the RAM and PCI bus... just drag
traces from the DRAM
controller to the DRAM socket and drag the PCI pins over to a Cirrus
CL-GX5446 video chip.

Am I missing something?  Please let me know before I just go out and build
my own.

Thanks

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