New Products

Techsol has released the first development kit for their Medallion CPU modules. The four sqare inch, low-power Medallion modules are preloaded with Linux, device-drivers, graphics and communications software. They also support industry standards to simplify the connection of Medallion-based products to both enterprise systems and portable devices. Medallion development kits provide a Medallion module mounted on a development infrastructure with ready-to-use interfaces and ready-to-run Linux software, including drivers for the available standard interfaces and the complete development environment.

The Thin Client Medallion Mini Development Kit hardware consists of an I/O board and a CPU board packaged in a 4" × 4" aluminum casing. The kit features a 60MHz ARM-720T-based RISC computer with Techsol's boot loader/debugger stored in Flash; Lineo's Embeddix pre-installed in the 32MB Disk-On-Chip module; 32MB of SDRAM for program execution; and Qt Embedded and Qtopia, both from Trolltech. Other elements of the kit include SVGA video, two USB host ports, one USB device port, a 10BaseT Ethernet port, a multimedia card for removable storage, stereo in/stereo out and headset jacks and LED status indicators. Instructions for disassembling the kit and schematics to facilitate development of custom products are also included. In addition, a full-sized development kit, which consists of an I/O board and a CPU board packaged in an ATX form factor, supporting ARM7, ARM9, XScale, MIPS and PowerPC architectures, is also available.

Manufacturer: Techsol Solutions, Inc.

Model: Thin Client Medallion Mini Development Kit

Suggested Retail Price: $500 US

URL: http://www.techsol.ca/

Target applications of the ZXE-x86 embedded controller include gaming systems, industrial control, information kiosks, and monitoring and surveillance systems.

The ZXE-x86's recovery from bad software uploads to Flash memory is benign, enabling improved performance for remote-controlled operations.

The ZXE-x86 embedded controller, available from the Zendex Corporation, performs real-time data control of an operation while allowing data to be remotely downloaded or allowing programs to be remotely uploaded. Incorporating ZF Micro's ZFx86 (formerly MachZ) microprocessor, the ZXE-x86 comes installed with up to 1GB of Flash, EPROM or RAM that can be accessed via Ethernet or the Internet. The processor comes with Linux installed, including a web server and 12 × 32 pin DIP memory sockets for 1GB of memory.

The ZXE-x86 feature set includes interfaces for Ethernet, floppy, IDE primary/secondary, and PS/2 keyboard and mouse connections. Two buffered TTL serial ports, two RS-232 serial ports, two RS-422/485 serial ports and a printer port are also available, as are Type I, II or III PCMCIA interfaces. The feature set can be changed by selecting hardware to meet OEM needs; system functionality can then be changed by replacing the memory ICs or by uploading programs via any I/O port.

Manufacturer: Zendex Corporation

Model: ZXE-x86 Embedded Controller

Suggested Retail Price: $995 US

URL: http://www.zendex.com/

JumpStart packages designed to help manufacturers get to market quickly with pretested and pre-integrated software they can use as a base for new systems.

Future JumpStart packages will be designed for storage, home networking, military/aerospace, telematics, handheld devices and wireless applications.

JumpStart for Communications is the first product in LynuxWorks' new line of component-based developer packages that include the new LynxOS 4.0, middleware, third-party layered software applications and engineering consulting time. The Communications package is aimed specifically at optical networking and new world voice applications. Included in JumpStart for Communications are a TCP/IP stack that supports IPv6, IPSec and integrated firewalls, as well as routing algorithms such as OSPFv2, BGP-4 and RIPv2. LynuxWorks' partners offer multiprotocol label switching (MPLS), Java-based management and CORBA applications.

The JumpStart packages will be built around the new 4.0 version of LynxOS, which offers hard real-time response, stability and open standards. A new feature of LynxOS 4.0 is the application binary interface (ABI) compatibility, which will enable increased levels of compatibility between Linux and LynxOS.

Manufacturer: LynuxWorks

Model: JumpStart for Communications with LynxOS 4.0

Suggested Retail Price: $50,000 US

URL: http://www.lynuxworks.com/