Lpc2000

A lot of great ideas here, thank you and thanks to everyone who
responded!
IT seems to me there are some recurring themes;
It makes me wonder if there isn't an opportunity here to define a very
minimalist open standard, miniature SBC format specifically tailored to
existing and foreseeable capabilities of the Philips LPC ARM MCU's( no
harm if others want to support it too) which allows any vendor to make
compatible but unique CPU boards and expansion modules which could be
mixed & matched to assemble any kind of ARM-based embedded product- or
is it just late and I've started to hallucinate? ;-)
I wonder if we could get some of the more active board vendors to help
and quickly agree on a format without drawing this out into the
never-ending ISO STD body committee ?
Maybe something like PC-104 but smaller and with provisions for all
conceivable built-in peripherals? 
Stacking or backplane?
STD 0.1" vs 2mm metric headers vs 
Finer pitch (but low cost) vendor specific board stacking connectors?
SO-DIMM or other card-edge style connector?

Or back to my favorite, the KISS principle? (Keep It Simple, S...)
 
Thanks
 
Frantz R

> -----Original Message-----
> From: bhorst [mailto:bob@tibion.com]
> Sent: Thursday, April 06, 2006 7:54 PM
> To: lpc2000@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: [lpc2000] Re: help define a LPC2888 demo board and you can
get
> one free!
> 
> --- In lpc2000@yahoogroups.com, "Frantz Robinson"
> <frantz.robinson@...> wrote:
> >... come up with unique demo boards for key technologies like the
> LPC2K ...
> 
> The biggest problem I have is that I need to design interface logic,
> motor control, etc. that does not have to be redone every time Philips
> comes out with a cool new part.  It makes sense for me to design a
> simple interface PCB, but I want that to work with current and future
> Philips demo boards.
> 
> So I want the Philips board to have a connector that will be standard
> for the whole family and last for more than one generation, so that
> when I finally get my proto fully working, I can just order the latest
> new Philips board to try it out, then quickly put it all together for
> the final product.
> 
> That means the Philips board should have things like the USB connector
> and any other interfaces specific to the processor, but bring all of
> the pins to the standard connector.
> 
> For an example, see the Silicon Labs F120 board.  It has a 96 pin
> connector with all of the pins, but has its own regulator, serial
> connector, etc.  If that connector and pinout was standard, the next
> board or others in the family might have a display or USB or whatever,
> but I would not need to change my interface board to try them.
> 
> This method also lets me build two interface boards and buy two proto
> boards.  Then when there is a problem, I can very quickly isolate to
> find out which is at fault.
> 
> The 96 pin connector may not be the best one to use, but picking some
> standard that is not too hard to route to (probably through hole)
> would work.
> 
> You could provide a few mating boards, say with extra memory, proto
> areas or even FPGAs.  Others might find them useful although I would
> probably keep designing my own.
> 
> -- Bob
> 
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> 
> Yahoo! Groups Links
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