[time-nuts] 5370 controller topics (was: processor boards available)

John Miles john at miles.io
Sun Mar 2 17:09:11 EST 2014


This is actually pretty interesting to me.  The questions of how to choose
an RTOS and how to handle power management seem to be relevant engineering
topics when discussing the 5370 processor boards.  It's not an academic
question in the professional world, where certain instruments I won't name
are based on a BSD variant running from a CF card with no power management
at all.  The designers of those instruments blew off the issue entirely, as
some are suggesting here.  As a result, users have to be warned explicitly
not to power down the box immediately after changing any parameters
(whatever that means), because it's been a genuine support problem for the
company in the past.  That is not even remotely OK in my view, in either an
amateur or professional context.

My own embedded design experience has mostly been with trivial 8-bit
applications at the low end and PC-hosted peripherals at the high end, so I
don't have much insight into the middle ground where modern controller
boards running full-fledged OSes need to operate autonomously.  So the
thread has been an educational read for me, and very much on-topic.

For those who don't want to deal with the thread drift, would it make sense
to set up a separate group on febo.com, Yahoo Groups, or elsewhere to
discuss these sorts of topics as they apply to John's 5370 work?  

-- john, KE5FX
Miles Design LLC


> -----Original Message-----
> From: time-nuts-bounces at febo.com [mailto:time-nuts-
> bounces at febo.com] On Behalf Of Tom Van Baak
> Sent: Thursday, February 27, 2014 2:31 PM
> To: Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement
> Subject: Re: [time-nuts] 5370 processor boards available
> 
> 
> > But we really are drifting away from the main thread.
> 
> Yes, indeed. It's time to wrap up the operating system and file system
> tangents and get back to time & frequency.
> 
> Those of you with positive suggestions for improvements of the 5370
> processor mod kit can email them to John Seamons directly. He has done an
> incredible job and the direction this thread has taken is unfortunate.
> 
> /tvb
> 
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