Author Topic: Mother-Board  (Read 10482 times)

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Offline monstaTopic starter

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Mother-Board
« on: February 18, 2006, 06:59:58 AM »
 8) Do you think i could use a old computer motherboard for a microcontroller and if so how would i program it, what must i do?
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Offline 2Hektik

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Re: Mother-Board
« Reply #1 on: April 06, 2006, 08:21:54 AM »
Wow.... :o

That would be a mammoth task!
You would have to run a small OS /(ie the linux kernel) and use USB or PCIs for I/Os, you'll run into problems running just from the BIOS.
Or even the PS2 post for a rotation sensor (crack open your old wheel mouse and you'll see why), the keyboard input for serial digital input.
So many options, anything is possible.

This would largely depend on how good you are at writing realtime programs.
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Offline Ben

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Re: Mother-Board
« Reply #2 on: May 26, 2006, 09:36:28 AM »
I've actually heard about someone doing this before, and he complained that he wasn't able to get a good response time out of it compared to a dedicated microcontroller.  *shrug*  I think he just used windows, but still, it seems like much more work than is necessary.  :)
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Offline cjwillms

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Re: Mother-Board
« Reply #3 on: May 27, 2006, 03:49:01 PM »
I'm pretty sure you could just use windows, and then just use the serial and parallel ports for input/output. The only real problem with that, is that you'll need a huge battery. Compared to a microcontroller, their power drain is insane.

If you do try to take the windows route, go for Windows 98 SE. You can strip it down to just the basic hardware interface, and then have your control program boot up, in place of explorer.exe
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Offline Ben

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Re: Mother-Board
« Reply #4 on: June 25, 2006, 09:39:29 AM »
It would perform much better if you used a stripped down version of linux.  :)
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Offline Nyx

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Re: Mother-Board
« Reply #5 on: July 26, 2006, 12:18:33 PM »
Quote from: Ben on June 25, 2006, 09:39:29 AM
It would perform much better if you used a stripped down version of linux.  :)

I'm sure it's actually easier to program serial/parallel I/O on linux also. On windows there are no standard APIs for it, it seems, you have to use some 3rd party libraries that may or may not work with all windows versions.

But anyhow, this is clearly possible to do. And as for the power drain, you could simply get a Mini-ITX motherboard with one of those via processors... Those things will run on less than 30 watts I'm pretty sure. There are also nano-itx motherboard which can fit in the palm of a hand.

http://www.cyberguys.com/templates/searchdetail.asp?productID=3831&sk=MC51419
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