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THE CHICKEN OR THE EGG

Unless I’m out of touch, I haven’t seen any scientific evidence confirming the existence of a chicken laying the first egg. I’m gonna stick my neck out and proclaim that software followed hardware. (That will either prove me to be a genius or generate thousands of "Fred, you idiot" e-mail responses.) Regardless of the answer to either of the above mysteries, I’m still going to start by describing the hardware first.

Datalight ThinSystem hardware comes housed in a heavy duty, blue, padded carrying case (see Photo 1). Everything a ThinSystem developer needs is in the case somewhere. There’s even an adapter for PS/2 keyboards that takes the smaller PS/2 connector to the larger legacy 5-pin DIN.

For the international readership, the modular power supply can be outfitted with three differing AC plug schemes. In essence, the ThinSystem hardware comes complete and ready to run right out of the case most anywhere in the world.

ThinSystem software is shipped as a CD but is also present within the bowels of the Arcom SBC-MediaGX I found in the blue case. Although designed specifically as a design reference board, the Arcom SBC-MediaGX is a whole bunch of embedded peripherals supported by a fast processor complex.

The idea is to develop the application with this board and embed the same hardware/software configuration into an OEM product. The Arcom SBC-MediaGX has all the functionality of any PC/AT-compatible system with these additions:

• 16-bit SoundBlaster

• PC/104-plus expansion bus

• MMX-enhanced CPU

• high-performance flat-panel controller

The Arcom SBC-MediaGX clocks in at 233 MHz with a National/Cyrix processor, 32 MB of DRAM (128 MB max.), and 8 MB of Intel Strata flash memory. You can skinny the above down to any combination of DRAM and flash memory, but the SBC-MediaGX was specifically designed to support the National/Cyrix processor and it must remain the same.

On the communications side, the SBC-MediaGX is strong. Not two, but four RS-232 ports with a single RS-485-capable port are on the board. Realtek supplies my Ethernet interface at 10- or 100-BaseTX specifications.

There are also a couple of USB interfaces. With all that hardware, you may ask, what can’t this thing do? Well, all of Bill’s Windows can be washed, including his palmtop/embedded version, CE. You can go north of the border for QNX and you can pet the Linux penguin.

Although the SBC-MediaGX can accept the full complement of rotating media, I’ve decided to not attach any of that stuff and to run the board only on flash memory. If anything has to be downloaded or uploaded to the SBC-MediaGX, I plan to do it with either the serial or the Ethernet interfaces.

I’m not going into the CMOS setup detail because it is a standard process and differs little from any other PC-compatible embedded platform. However, I printed out the 0.397² of doc that comes in Acrobat format on the hardware SBC-MediaGX support CD. It’s thorough.

Basically, I took the brand spankin’ new SBC-MediaGX embedded PC out of that beautifully engineered and padded antistatic case, and immediately dropped it!

I live in an older Florida home, and the floors are made of a mix of rock and concrete called terrazzo. The processor heatsink is glued on, and the first thing I thought I was going to have to do was chase the sink across the hard, slick Florida Room floor. I had installed the DRAM stick before I fumbled the SBC-MediaGX and I thought the DRAM stick wouldn’t survive the meeting with the terrazzo either.

Well, what do I know? I plugged in the video ribbon and connected a standard mouse and keyboard. The power supply connector is supposedly keyed and contains only a +5-V and ground termination. Looks like you could put it on either way, so I took the path of least resistance.

I installed the standard AC plug set on the power brick and fired it up. No problems. I was surprised to find the ThinSystem software and ROM-DOS already installed in flash memory. I was expecting to have to tell you about doing that. It’s OK—I just get more page space for important things like describing how to connect to Datalight’s Citrix server with the ThinSystem-filled SBC-MediaGX.