Skeeter

=Skeeter (Amiga Laptop)=

Skeeter is the name of my project intending to result in an Amiga Laptop computer. Skeeter is not a laptop, and is not an Amiga, but can be either and both. Using an industry standard modular computer form factor allows a PowerPC module (Amiga OS4 requires PowerPC) to fit in a variety of user cases such as ATX, MiniITX, FlexATX, and hopefully a laptop as well as whatever industrial/embedded forms that might be desirable. So a single module can serve those who want a big-box computer with lots of expansion slots, and also serve someone that wants a small compact case like MiniITX, and hopefully a laptop.

Standard computer module form factors

 * Q Seven uses thel aptop graphics board MXM connector. This gives Q Seven a potential advantage over most others, in that it could be used with a straddlemount MXM connector and thus be parallel to the carrier motherboard, saving some Z dimension. Though I'm not sure such a straddlemount MXM connector exists. And Q Seven lacks feature pins available in other formats here and wherever, and is intended for very low power consumption so it might not meet what I desire of my laptop Amiga anyway.
 * ETX Older standard with PCI32, lacks SATA, PCI_Express, and other more modern features.
 * XTX is a modification to ETX standard to remove antiquated features and replace them with SATA and PCI_Express in the carrier connectors.
 * COM Express (aka ETX-Express) Now on revision 2 of the standard to include USB3 SuperSpeed configurations. There's a number of different module types in COM-Express, I'd go with Type 6 at this point, which begins to exist in Rev 2. Previous to Type 6, I would have gone with Type 2 out of popularity in existing carrier motherboards, or type 3 that seems like it'd be more useful to PowerPC folks with more ethernet ports instead of IDE/PATA. I'm concerned about how tall this system is in the Z dimension, that it would lead to a "thick" and ugly laptop. See the Carrier Design Guide . Order COM.0 R2.0 spec from PICMG for $95 as non-member. See some example Com-Express carriers and PowerPC Com-Express Modules.
 * ESM-Express also sounds similar to COM-Express, but is intended for extreme environments and is fully enclosed by shielding with "cooling ears" to help dissipate heat into the cooling enclosure. They also have an ES-Mini version, though I think that is too small for what I want to include for a PowerPC system. These may also suffer from Z dimension thickness.
 * Core Express is also rather small, and I'm not sure it provides enough features that I desire, and may also suffer from Z dimension thickness.
 * Plenty of others out there.

Tools and kits

 * JTAG Debuggers
 * Abatron BDI3000 JTAG debugger - is rather expensive, but something like this is really necessary for board debug and firmware debug.
 * Etoolsmiths GuardianSE JTAG debugger - also rather expensive, I'm led to believe it's no longer available. This is the one I have though, but I wish I'd got the BDI3000 instead. Etoolsmiths told me they never did release support for 86xx PowerPCs from Freescale as promised when I purchased the debugger. >:( I'd say avoid these guys and go with Abatron.
 * PCI-Express
 * PLX Tech PEX8111 PCI to PCI-Express bridge RDK REVERSE board. PCI-Express Gen1. Plugs into PCI32 slot and provides a PCI-Express x1 slot (physical x16 plastic). I plug my switch eval board into this.
 * PLX Tech PEX8618 PCI-Express switch RDK 8618AA-AIC4U4D, configuration moduls 0107 and 0108. PCI-Express Gen2. Plugs into a x4 slot and provides 4 slots of x4 each. And Breakout board 1111 plugs into one of these x4 slots, splitting the lanes into four slots of x1 each. This gives a lot of PCI-Expres slots to play with for uboot coding/debug and testing/writing drivers for various peripheral chips.

Resources

 * Battery University has information about charging batteries, chemistries, and all sorts of stuff. I have not yet figured out of charging circuit is part of motherboard or inside battery pack.
 * ExpressCard Spec
 * USB3 SuperSpeed Spec
 * MXM graphics module spec and a store to buy connectors and cards.
 * AMD Embedded Developer Support site gives specs for many chips and example schematic designs and layouts, with some footprints in Orcad format. AmigaOne X1000 got around quicker than I did about proving SB600 can be used. There's also a link in there somewhere to embedded graphics group for embedded class Radeon chips (mostly somewhat older mobile graphics chips).
 * Uboot firmware bootloader under GPL license, as seen in AmigaOne SE/XE/MicroA1 and Sam440/460 computers.
 * Common Firmware Environment (CFE) firmware bootloaderunder BSD-alike license, as seen in AmigaOne X1000.
 * PLX Technologies PCI-Express switches to fanout small number of PCI-Express ports in most PowerPC SoC chips to many slots/chips. While other vendors have PCIe switches, PLX devices seem to have the most versatility in number of ports and different port sizes. Provides datasheets and Orcad symbol/footprint files.