PCI bus controller?

Does anybody know of any good PCI bus controllers that are suitable for use
hobby boards.  I've been thinking about designing a fully fledged PC using a
ColdFire chip with SDRAM, PCI, USB and IDE.  Getting Linux up and running
shouldn't be a problem if I use common USB and PCI chips.  Any suggestions
and sources for nice PCI bus controllers?

Dave

David Huseby wrote:
> Does anybody know of any good PCI bus controllers that are suitable for use
> hobby boards.  I've been thinking about designing a fully fledged PC using a
> ColdFire chip with SDRAM, PCI, USB and IDE.  Getting Linux up and running
> shouldn't be a problem if I use common USB and PCI chips.  Any suggestions
> and sources for nice PCI bus controllers?
> 
> Dave
> 
> 
Good luck.  It's almost impossible to find these devices in anything
but BGA packages, which are not very hobbyist friendly.  I would start
with PLX Tech.  (www.plxtech.com).  I think PLX9054 is a Motorola bus
to PCI bridge.  Even in non-bga packages they need lots of pins and you
get pretty fine pitch QFPs that are also hard to use.

Dave Rooney

"David Huseby" <dave@linuxprogrammer.org> wrote in
news:10dohnms5uul439@corp.supernews.com: 

> Does anybody know of any good PCI bus controllers that are suitable for
> use hobby boards.  I've been thinking about designing a fully fledged PC
> using a ColdFire chip with SDRAM, PCI, USB and IDE.  Getting Linux up
> and running shouldn't be a problem if I use common USB and PCI chips. 
> Any suggestions and sources for nice PCI bus controllers?

Why not step up just a bit to the IBM 405 series. They have built a in
SDRAM controller, PCI bridge, external bus for connecting to simple
devices like FLASH, SRAM, etc. all on the CPU itself. Look for a 405 based
SBC and see what it comes with. 

-- 
- Mark ->
--

> Why not step up just a bit to the IBM 405 series. They have built a in
> SDRAM controller, PCI bridge, external bus for connecting to simple
> devices like FLASH, SRAM, etc. all on the CPU itself. Look for a 405 based
> SBC and see what it comes with.

Interesting.  Thanks for the suggestion.

Dave

> Good luck.  It's almost impossible to find these devices in anything
> but BGA packages, which are not very hobbyist friendly.  I would start
> with PLX Tech.  (www.plxtech.com).  I think PLX9054 is a Motorola bus
> to PCI bridge.  Even in non-bga packages they need lots of pins and you
> get pretty fine pitch QFPs that are also hard to use.

That's what I was afraid of.  I wish there were more hobby friendly parts
out there.  I guess that's why so many hobby projects these days are done
with FPGA's.  You can build an FPGA board and then implement the chip that
you need.  I think I'll just be satisfied with an IDE interface which I can
put directly on the ColdFire bus, memory mapped.  That way I could at least
run uCLinux with ext2 support and have a real file system.

Dave

"Mark A. Odell" <odellmark@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:Xns951397AD730B9CopyrightMarkOdell@130.133.1.4...
> "David Huseby" <dave@linuxprogrammer.org> wrote in
> news:10dohnms5uul439@corp.supernews.com:
> > Does anybody know of any good PCI bus controllers that are suitable for
> > use hobby boards.  I've been thinking about designing a fully fledged PC
> > using a ColdFire chip with SDRAM, PCI, USB and IDE.  Getting Linux up
> > and running shouldn't be a problem if I use common USB and PCI chips.
> > Any suggestions and sources for nice PCI bus controllers?
> Why not step up just a bit to the IBM 405 series. They have built a in
> SDRAM controller, PCI bridge, external bus for connecting to simple
> devices like FLASH, SRAM, etc. all on the CPU itself. Look for a 405 based
> SBC and see what it comes with.

Also check out the IBM 440EP - a successor to the 405, and has 2 USB ports
and dual 10/100 ethernet. We're going to be using that for our next product
@ work.

-->Neil

David Huseby <dave@linuxprogrammer.org> wrote:

> That's what I was afraid of.  I wish there were more hobby friendly parts
> out there.  

I suspect it's PCI itself that is imposing the limits to
hobbyist-friendliness here.  While it may be possible to match all its
gazillions of specific requirements on a hobbyist project, it'll quite
possibly not worth the effort of trying.  To put it bluntly: how were
you expecting to squeeze 100+ pins out of the footprint area of a
manually solderable part?

-- 
Hans-Bernhard Broeker (broeker@physik.rwth-aachen.de)
Even if all the snow were burnt, ashes would remain.

"Neil Bradley" <nb_no_spam@synthcom.com> wrote in
news:10du3aqbl80564f@corp.supernews.com: 

>> > Does anybody know of any good PCI bus controllers that are suitable
>> > for use hobby boards.  I've been thinking about designing a fully
>> > fledged PC using a ColdFire chip with SDRAM, PCI, USB and IDE. 
>> > Getting Linux up and running shouldn't be a problem if I use common
>> > USB and PCI chips. Any suggestions and sources for nice PCI bus
>> > controllers? 
>> Why not step up just a bit to the IBM 405 series. They have built a in
>> SDRAM controller, PCI bridge, external bus for connecting to simple
>> devices like FLASH, SRAM, etc. all on the CPU itself. Look for a 405
>> based SBC and see what it comes with.
> 
> Also check out the IBM 440EP - a successor to the 405, and has 2 USB
> ports and dual 10/100 ethernet. We're going to be using that for our
> next product @ work.

Indeed a much nicer series, the 440, but I was concerned it may be more
expensive than the older 405 series. Remember, AMCC now owns the rights to
the ppc4xx family. 

-- 
- Mark ->
--

> I suspect it's PCI itself that is imposing the limits to
> hobbyist-friendliness here.  While it may be possible to match all its
> gazillions of specific requirements on a hobbyist project, it'll quite
> possibly not worth the effort of trying.  To put it bluntly: how were
> you expecting to squeeze 100+ pins out of the footprint area of a
> manually solderable part?

A nice PLCC package would do.

Dave

David Huseby wrote:

>>Good luck.  It's almost impossible to find these devices in anything
>>but BGA packages, which are not very hobbyist friendly.  I would start
>>with PLX Tech.  (www.plxtech.com).  I think PLX9054 is a Motorola bus
>>to PCI bridge.  Even in non-bga packages they need lots of pins and you
>>get pretty fine pitch QFPs that are also hard to use.
>>    
>>
>
>That's what I was afraid of.  I wish there were more hobby friendly parts
>out there.  I guess that's why so many hobby projects these days are done
>with FPGA's.  You can build an FPGA board and then implement the chip that
>you need.  I think I'll just be satisfied with an IDE interface which I can
>put directly on the ColdFire bus, memory mapped.  That way I could at least
>run uCLinux with ext2 support and have a real file system.
>
>  
>
IDE works fine with the ColdFire. Make sure to access all locations but
DataPort in PIO-0 mode.
Interrupt needs pullup and be positive edge triggered. Otherwise you
will get trouble with some drives.
This can be combined with DMA easily.

For PCI you need a "Host Bridge". This bridge is able to do IDSEL
access. No peripheral bridge
is able to do this.

Regards
Thomas