[NTLK] MP2x00 Internal Interconnect Breakout

Anthony Morrow anthonydmorrow at gmail.com
Tue Jan 13 17:52:24 EST 2015


Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it… My MessagePad is sitting on a shelf right now, but I’d own something like this for it. I’m guess I would need to pull the SER-001 board out to make room.

-Tony Morrow
lookanotherblog.com


On Jan 13, 2015, at 5:44 PM, Harbourmaster <harbourmaster at gmail.com> wrote:

> I LIKE those crazy dreams!!
> 
> On Tue, Jan 13, 2015 at 2:38 PM, Matthias Melcher <mm at matthiasm.com> wrote:
> 
>> 
>> Based on this EMail thread, I have found a mix of *really* nice chips that
>> I want to use to build another (better) USB interconnect for the internal
>> port.
>> 
>> I will not use one of the dumb USB-to-RS232 converters, but instead use an
>> LPC1347 CPU, which incidentally costs the same, but comes with an ARM
>> Cortex MCU core running at 72 MHz. It has more than enough pins to connect
>> to every pin on the connector, and more (much more) than enough power to
>> handle USB and Ser1.
>> 
>> It has *one* feature that made it my favorite: it can be programmed
>> through the USB port alone without any special software. So if I should be
>> able to build a board for regular users (aiming at 50 Euros), any user can
>> easily upgrade the firmware at home. So even if I don't get that thing
>> right from the beginning, we can still fine-tune later.
>> 
>> The key features:
>> 
>> - physically add a USB port where the Modem port was planned (no filing
>> or drilling required)
>> - use Ser1 in a compatible way, not blocking the external port if no USB
>> connection
>> - no extra software needed on the MessagePad. It just works.
>> - full support for debugging
>> - fixing the timing bug that requires slowdown.exe on MSWindows
>> 
>> Now for the convenience part:
>> 
>> - charging the battery via USB should be possible if enough power is
>> available
>> 
>> And finally for the crazy part. We have access to the otherwise unused
>> serial port 3, so why not use it and add some functionality?
>> 
>> So here are some dreams. Feel free to add if you have ideas!
>> 
>> Serial Port 3 can be accessed using one of the terminal programs on the
>> MP. Using the terminal, the MP can communicate with the ARM Cortex card,
>> just as if it was an external PC or Modem.
>> 
>> The ARM Cortex can then very easily provide a command prompt interface,
>> just like an FTP server. Heck, it *could* actually *be* an FTP or Web
>> Server. The MessagePad would think that there was a modem, again requiring
>> no new software.
>> 
>> Now, there is plenty of space in the box. Why not add a MicroSD card.
>> Todays MicroSD cards are so huge in capacity that they can easily hold
>> every .pkg ever created for the MessagePad. The SD card could be browsed
>> with any Newton web browser, and the packages could be installed right from
>> the SD card.
>> 
>> This would work the other way around as well. The Cortex can pretend to be
>> a PC, and the user can store system backups on the SD card and export data
>> to it without ever connecting to a PC.
>> 
>> To the outside world, the Cortex can pretend to be a memory card, giving
>> access to the internal SD card from any PC that is connected to the USB
>> port.
>> 
>> 
>> Dreaming crazy dreams ;-)
>> 
>> 
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>> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> 
> Aloha, Ken Santucci
> 
> PayPal preferred, USPS money orders gladly accepted.
> 
> eBay ID = harbourmaster
> 
> Shipping from zip code 90808
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
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