Freeman sent me the tech manual for cool runner and I took a look. It says that it has 2MB graphics memory with acceleration onboard. This must mean its not using the CS5530 for video, because that is a shared memory configuration, allowing you to select 1-4MB for the graphics RAM and it shaves that off of your system memory. The tech manual does say it uses the CX5530 "IO Companion". Note that 5530 also deals with IDE and other things, so maybe CX5530 is the IO companion and CS5530 is another companion chip for audio and video? This sure is confusing. I know that the linux kernel 2.2.18 has special support for CX5530 with IDE devices. Tech manual for Cool Runner says it uses Nation NM4548 codec for audio, and the block digram shows audio feeding into CX5530. The graphic controller is connected to the PCI bus directly, not to the CX5530. So this is the opposite of the PCM-5530, this one appears to use MediaGX for audio but not for video. Interesting. This graphic controller appears to be better that PCM-5822 (MediaGX) but I don't believe anything until I see it working on linux. I says that a separate on-chip video buffer enables > 30 fps MPEG1 video playback together with the CS5530 companion ship. Now I'm really confused! Okay, they have a pretty clear description of CX5530. According to Lippert, the CX5530 is a PCI-to-ISA bridge (south bridge) ACP1 compatible chipset that provides AT/ISA functioanlity. The device also contains state-of-the-art power management enabling notebook as well as "Deep Green" implementations (say what???). Hardware support for the Cyrix Virtual System Architecture (VSA) is provided enabling Microsoft PC97 and PC98 compatible audio (which is apparently also SB16 compatible ...). It says that the audio signals are on a 16-pin IDC header and it has line in, line out, and microphone in. Strangely, the USB ports are on the same 16-pin header as audio. Not a problem but wierd. It says it uses the PanelLink LCD interface that allows long wire runs to the LCD, that sounds interesting. I'm not familiar with that standard, but I'm interested, because the LCD ports on the PCM-5822 can only go 18 inches. There is a modem of PCM-582x that trades the TV scan converter for an LVDS tranmitter, that is the Advantech method of getting long cable runs to LCD panels. I need to do some research on LVDS vs PanelLink to better understand the differences. Either way, the panels I am using don't support either LVDS or PanelLink, so this doesn't help me right now. I assume that if one wants to take advantage of either LVDS or the PanelLink standards, they must find a panel that supports those. Anybody have more insight into LVDS and PanelLink? How do we locate panels that work with these standards? The tech manual confirms that it has both PC/104 and PC/104+ expansion ports. Very nice, I have never seen a board that has both. It says that the TV Out port supports S-Video and BAS. I've never heard of BAS, but I assume that its the same as composite video, because it says it can connect direct to TVs. It looks like there is no BIOS setting to switch between PAL and NTSC, because they show assembler code examples for how to do this (not too good, I'd rather just configure BIOS). If I ordered one of these I'd want it factory configured for NTSC if possible. Most of the pinouts and headers look standard: - 44-pin IDE header for laptop drives - CompactFlash socket supports 1GB microdrive - standard IDC cables for serial, parallel, etc - PS/2 ports for keyboard and mouse Looks like special cables (or home brew cables) are needed for the ethernet, VGA, LCD, audio, and USB. They have some interesting power statistics: - 1.2A at 166 Mhz (CPU GLXV 2.2 volts) - 0.8A at 200 Mhz (CPU GXI 1.6 volts) - 1.5A at 233 Mhz (CPU GXLV 2.5 volts) - 1,1A at 300 Mhz (CPU GXI 2.0 volts) These numbers are confusing. 300Mhz runs leaner than 166Mhz. -- Doug -- Subscription/unsubscription/info requests: send e-mail with subject of "subscribe", "unsubscribe", or "info" toWear-Hard Mailing List Archive (searchable): http://wearables.blu.org please, Please, *PLEASE* don't subscribe through a forward/false domain
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