What do you want from your single board computer?
- I want all the items like a power source, PC cable, development software, and sample code, to come in the box with the board when I buy it.
- I want a menu based operating system on the board that lets me upload and download programs, look at memory, test any and all I/O on the board, all the time, so that I can't wipe it out or lose it.
- I want to be able to tell it to power up and run my program right away, or else to stay in the on-board system until prompted to run my program by someone.
- I want the option of using my own favorite assembly language or high level language as well as having a BASIC interpreter resident that let's me do all the I/O with bit specific commands instead of playing with manipulating bits within bytes all the time.
- I want something that has finished routines I can call from my program, to handle all on board peripherals so that I can just write my application and not a whole system. (I want this because I am not going to use the on board BASIC that uses all of these already.)
- I want a real time clock (Y2K compliant, of course)
- I want to be able to make the board do something really useful to me or my target audience in less than 20 minutes from a cold start.
- I want to be able to slave it to a PC serial port or use it stand alone any time I wish.
- I want 2 interrupts available for fast and/or very important signals.
- I want to be able to save important parameters from my BASIC program or other program to non-volatile memory so I can make my programs self learning or configurable.
- I want to be able to switch between two on-board serial ports at various baud rates as well as do some byte wide I/O expansion direct from the processor bus.
- I want to be able to use a full OPTO22 expansion connector (24 I/O points) and be able to set each of the 24 bits to be either an input or output, in a jiffy, with a visual, hardware jumper.
- I want rugged individual 30mA capable transistors on each output that in case of a mishap can be bought inexpensively at the local electronics store.
- I want a board that is rugged enough to take some abuse from the folks on the bench, production line, field install crew, or me when I get in a hurry or tired.
- I want all the IC's in sockets cause it makes my life easier down the road or when I have a mishap during development.
- I want a system that allows me the option of trying a lot of my ideas without a huge investment of time and money.
- I want an analog to digital converter on board (that BASIC reads directly into a variable) so I can have variable input control from a rotary or slide control potentiometer on my project.
- I want the system to test the RAM every time on power up and to have a watch dog timer as well.
- I want to show my ____________ (boss, teacher, friend, peer, self, enemy, family) something working nicely in a short time after I start, even if I know that what I really need to do might take a long time and a large amount of thought. In short, I want to get some early incentive going for me.
- I could probably design something suitable for my task myself, but I can't see the economy of doing that at this time.
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