Getting Started Guide to supported hardware

Introduction

The aim of this guide is to present what hardware the ST40 Linux release runs on, and what peripherals we have verified as working. The guide will also document what hardware we know definitely doesn't work, or for which support is discontinued.

Supported chips

We basically support two CPU chips, the ST40RA166 and the GX1 Eval. The ST40RA166 was originally called the STB1, but they are the same thing. The GX1 is a specialised chip aimed at set top box applications. It incorporates a 2D graphics engine with multiple overlay planes.

Supported on all chips

• SCIF serial ports
• PCI
• RTC (Real Time Clock)

On chip GX1 peripherals

• Dumb frame buffer
• Video for Linux video overlay
• USB

Supported Boards

Details of the supported hardware is available from the Target board info section of the web site.

Discontinued boards

7750 Overdrive

This board had an Hitachi 7750, and support for this board is now discontinued.

PCI cards

Network cards

• Linksys LNE100TX Ethernet card
• ST10/100E Ethernet card
• Intel eepro100 Ethernet card
• Realtek RTL8029 Ethernet card

We recommend use of the Linksys card or ST10/100, they are by far the best tested. The Linksys and the ST10/100 are both clones of the DEC Tulip, and to all intents and purposes are the same chip. We don't recommend the Realtek8029, because it is an NE2000 clone, which is not the world's greatest Ethernet chip.

Problematic network cards

• Winbond W89c940

  This card has proved to be unreliable in ST40 based systems

• 3Com PCI 3c905C (Tornado) does not work. We haven't investigated why not.

Disc drive controllers

• SIG IDE controller
• PROMISE IDE controller
• TEKRAM ULTRA160 SCSI DC 390U3W
• NCR810 SCSI controller

Note that you cannot use IDE controllers in GX1 systems due to a silicon bug. SCSI is your only option on these systems. Note that there are many different TEKRAM controllers, we have only tested the 390U3W.

Problematic controllers

• Any Adaptec SCSI controller

  They seem to lock up straight away - no idea why.

USB controllers and peripherals

We have tried various PCI OHCI and UHCI controllers, and all seem to work fine.

We have also successfully used a Belkin four port USB PCI card (F5U006-UNV Ver1.1). This is based around the agere USS-344.

We have used the following USB peripherals successfully:

• Standard USB keyboard and mouse
• Logitech wireless keyboard and mouse
• Compact flash/smart media adapter
• SparkLan WL-382F Wireless LAN adapter

Problematic USB peripherals

• Macally Webkey wireless keyboard/mouse
• Microsoft Optical Mouse - requires GX1 cut 1.1 or later

Sound cards

• Creative soundblaster 128 (CT5808 or CT4810)

Problematic sound cards

• Ensoniq 1371 cards (Creative CT5803)

  These have proved unreliable in ST40 systems due to strange DMA problems

Graphics cards

PCI serial cards

There are a large number of PCI serial cards available, most of which simply map a 16550 or equivalent device into the PCI address space. Unfortunately how they do this varies from manufacturer to manufacturer, so a small amount of work may be required to get the card working. Have look at the Linux Serial Driver home page for more details.

The only card we have any personal experience with is an unbranded card, with a chip labeled "Cyber 8000". This reports itself as a device from AFAVLAB Technology Inc. Several versions are available with different combinations of serial and parallel ports (for example, the dual serial model has PCI ID 13db:2130).

These cards are available in the UK from Maplin Electronics. For example the dual serial model has part number UW65. This card works fine, and we now ship a modified kernel which detects this card automatically.

It also appears to be available under the MRi brand name, although this is not confirmed.

PCMCIA cards

We have used the following PCMCIA cards succesfully in the MB374.

• PCMCIA Compact Flash adaptor
• PCMCIA SmartMedia adaptor
• US Robotics PCMCIA Wireless LAN card
• Linksys PCMCIA Wireless LAN card