[time-nuts] Diamond Systems Prometheus EA

[Jason Rabel]

> I have a few of these old PC-104 x86 boards:
> http://www.diamondsystems.com/products/prometheusEAL
> They have a 100MHz ZFx86 low power processor with built-in Ethernet MAC and
> Phy, 32MB of RAM and 2MB of flash and they can run Linux.
> I was wondering if anyone had run NTP on a system like this.

I haven't rolled my own, but I've seen several old time server appliances use those PC-104 boards like that.

You are going to have to strip it down quite a bit to run on 32MB of RAM, and end up using probably a CF adapter to boot from.

Might want to write some numbers down to see how much it would cost to get one of these running if you don't have a power supply or
other necessary components. It might just be cheaper to buy something more modern as a complete kit.

I have an old Praecis Gntp server, inside is an old board similar to yours, a custom Endrun timing board, and a trimble GPS module.
Long story short, the CPU overheats and will lockup, apparently this type of failure was common when I talked to a tech guy at
Endrun. I've seen exactly ONE board the same model for sale, but the price is just too high. I keep telling myself one of these days
I'll reverse engineer it some and have the custom timing board talk to another PC... They are just using linux and ntpd with their
own custom driver...