Documentation availability [was Re: Call for SPARCengine 1e BSP]

[Joel Sherrill <joel@OARcorp.com>]

Scott Newell wrote:
> At 01:24 PM 9/8/2005 , Joel Sherrill <joel at OARcorp.com> wrote:
> 
>>Ivan Galkin wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>As for the second-hand boards, our hard-earned experience tells us not 
>>>to get on that route without documentation and a ready to use BSP. It 
>>>took us a couple of  months and triple the cost of the board to get docs 
>>>for our sparcengine 1e.
>>
>>Motorola seems to be quite good about having their documentation 
>>available on-line.  You should be able to download mvme167 documentation
>>right now easily.
>>
>>OTOH any board with a Marvell part is IMO underdocumented.  They have a
>>policy that requires an NDA before documentation can be received.  And 
>>this is for parts that appear on common VMEBus boards including a few
>>Motorola ones.
> 
> 
> This is good to know.  What other manufacturers are good and not-so-good
> about providing free docs?
> 
> I'm not sure if I've asked about this here before or not, but I'm looking
> for docs on the Artesyn PM/PPC.  I picked up a handful dirt-cheap..
> They're pretty nicely loaded (458MHz, 256MB dram, 16MB flash), but just
> about useless without some docs.  Anyone?
> 
> I guess I'd put Artesyn and Force in the not-so-good category.

Force has changed hands at least three times since the SPARC
board in question.  I recall one time by Solectron.  Then a deal where
they became a division of DY-4.  Then I think DY-4 became part of
Wright-Curtis who also owns Vista Controls.

The original i386 port of RTEMS was to a 16 Mhz Force CPU-386 and their
documentation was good then (1990-91).  I doubt the mergers have helped.




> --
> newell
> 


-- 
Joel Sherrill, Ph.D.             Director of Research & Development
joel at OARcorp.com                 On-Line Applications Research
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