Intel 80C186/80C188 Evaluation Board? Re: Single Board Computers

[Chuck Guzis]

On 10/11/2005 at 6:47 AM Gordon JC Pearce wrote:

>I'm not sure if that counts, though.  It may well not be running Linux 
>on anything that you would recognise as PC hardware.  It might not have 
>a BIOS as such, even.

I meant "PC" in a much broader sense than in the "IBM PC" sense.  What I was wondering about was how many "appliances" had sufficient I/O capabilities that they could be configured to run a generic operating system.  This would mean at a minimum, some way to do console I/O and some sort of disk storage, as well as being able to support an OS to start with.  So my DSL modem would seem to fulfill these requirements, as disk is simulated by flash memory--I suppose an external PC could even serve as a USB disk drive.  My little FAX box has suffiicent I/O and memory as well as an internal diskette drive to meet the test. 

A USR Courier modem, with its 80C188, might, but there's not much RAM and no way to connect an external peripheral, so it fails the test, even though you could probably reprogram the PROM and get it to give you a command prompt via the RS-232 port.

How about a TIVO or an MP3 player?  Certainly most video game boxes have the necessary resources (I seem to recall a web site dedicated to getting early Xboxes running Linux--it wasn't as simply as you'd think).

Cheers,
Chuck