Re: FPGA for PCI based servo control board

["alex" <telecomt-at-tht.net>]

Just took a brief look  - many apparently aren't free.
There is MiniRTL which fits on a floppy which comes with network support.
But its very frightful to make a jump into uncharted waters...
Alex
----- Original Message ----- 
From: Bert Pirson <hpirson-at-buffalo.veridian.com>
To: Multiple recipients of list <emc-at-nist.gov>
Sent: Thursday, April 03, 2003 5:35 PM
Subject: RE: FPGA for PCI based servo control board


> 
> > 
> > >> The more serious problem is the NIC driver in the
> > >> PC.  Linux provides a whole bunch of NIC drivers,
> > >> for many different cards.  AFAIK, they are _not_
> > >> usable by a real-time task running under RTLinux
> > >> or RTAL.  Can somebody who knows the EMC architecture
> > >> either confirm this, or set me straight?
> > >
> > > Yup, that is true.  You'd have to go in at the hardware
> > > level, with a custom driver that will run in RT.  This
> > > might not be so hard, but you'd need a different version
> > > for each chipset.  Not an attractive thought.
> > 
> > Nope, not attractive at all.  As far as I am concerned,
> > that just about kills the ethernet version,  unless
> > somebody steps forward and volunteers to write real
> > time raw packet drivers for a couple dozen of the most
> > common NICs. :-(
> > 
> > Actually, I wonder if the source for the normal,
> > non-realtime drivers would contain most of the
> > hardware level details.  I know absolutely nothing
> > about how those drivers are structured, but perhaps
> > real-time drivers could use large chunks of the
> > existing code?
> > 
> 
> Four or five years ago I used to follow the RTLinux mail list.  There
> were several people developing RTLinux real-time Ethernet drivers, I
> think for use in multi-track audio recording systems.  
> 
> A Google search on "RTLinux Ethernet" yields many hits.
> 
> Bert
> 
> 
> 
>