PC 104 questions for newbie

Hi,

I'm new here ad new to PC 104.
I have a PC104 system in front of me having:
- RS232 port
- MVB/CAN Bus interface
- Parallel port
- PS/2 keyboard port
- special connector to a touchscreen which i have (working!)
- some little rotary switch to dial in a address for something in
hexadecimal (now it is 0xF and 0xF)
- a loudspeaker output

everything boots fine. Having DOS 6.22 installed.
There is a Flash or similar memory acting as drive c: size is 8MB!
RAM is 16MB I can use XMS with himem.sys

So what I have is a DOS 6.22 system with a nice touchscreen.
My question is:
I want to do something usefull with this. Something like a home automation
controller. I can write software in c/c++, vb, c# and could go back to old
qbasic, pascal times.
So how can I build up a development environment for this PC104 device? How
would you write a graphical user interface under DOS? Can I develop under
WinXP and test my software in DOS? how can I transfer my program to the
pc104 flash? There is interlnk/intersvr installed in the DOS maschine - I
know this communication from old times but there must be a easier way. I
don't want to disassemble the PC104 board stack to get access to the flash
or "disk on flash" - even if I could how could I use this flash?
Is it possible to use the MVB/CAN bus interface. I know nothing about this
card, and I don't know how to control a interface which is not presenting
itself to the OS like RS232, parallel etc. Same for the loudspeaker.
Do I have to use qbasic or pascal on a winXP maschine to write my program,
or is there a framework for graphical interfaces under DOS which is easy to
learn.
Should I install a very small installation of Linux?
How do I have access to the bios?

Sorry for all those questions, I want to handicraft something of use with
this nice board... ;-)

Thanks,
leutholl

leutholl wrote:

> So how can I build up a development environment for this PC104 device? How
> would you write a graphical user interface under DOS? 

Borland C++ or M$ VC V1.5 or Watcom or one of several others. You might 
want to skip DOS and use something like linux or FreeRTOS or ecos, in 
which case you might need the appropriate tools- probably gcc.

http://www.hitechlabs.tk/- there are others (GEM etc.)

Can I develop under
> WinXP and test my software in DOS? how can I transfer my program to the
> pc104 flash? 

via floppy, via a serial link, ethernet.... there will have to be a 
loader program of some sort running on the PC.

>  I
> don't want to disassemble the PC104 board stack to get access to the flash
> or "disk on flash" - even if I could how could I use this flash?

There should be a flash loader program with the board's utilities. 
probably runs under DOS.

> Is it possible to use the MVB/CAN bus interface. I know nothing about this
> card, and I don't know how to control a interface which is not presenting
> itself to the OS like RS232, parallel etc. Same for the loudspeaker.

That's a case of read the manual.

Just play around is the best thing. You can get started just with DOS, a 
hard drive, and borland and just get designing little programs till you 
get confident.

Paul Burke

Am Wed, 22 Mar 2006 08:13:42 +0000 schrieb Paul Burke:

> leutholl wrote:
> 
>> So how can I build up a development environment for this PC104 device? How
>> would you write a graphical user interface under DOS? 
> 
> Borland C++ or M$ VC V1.5 or Watcom or one of several others. You might 
> want to skip DOS and use something like linux or FreeRTOS or ecos, in 
> which case you might need the appropriate tools- probably gcc.
> 
> http://www.hitechlabs.tk/- there are others (GEM etc.)
> 
> Can I develop under
>> WinXP and test my software in DOS? how can I transfer my program to the
>> pc104 flash? 
> 
> via floppy, via a serial link, ethernet.... there will have to be a 
> loader program of some sort running on the PC.
> 
>>  I
>> don't want to disassemble the PC104 board stack to get access to the flash
>> or "disk on flash" - even if I could how could I use this flash?
> 
> There should be a flash loader program with the board's utilities. 
> probably runs under DOS.
> 
>> Is it possible to use the MVB/CAN bus interface. I know nothing about this
>> card, and I don't know how to control a interface which is not presenting
>> itself to the OS like RS232, parallel etc. Same for the loudspeaker.
> 
> That's a case of read the manual.
> 
> Just play around is the best thing. You can get started just with DOS, a 
> hard drive, and borland and just get designing little programs till you 
> get confident.
> 
> Paul Burke

Thanks very much for the link and some graphical interfaces, maybe I wasn't
clear enough to describe that I want to have a graphical toolkit under DOS
where I can programm my own graphical componentes. What I want to do is the
use the system for home automation and to place some buttons on the screen.
If you touch a button, something shall be sent on the serial port. That's
all. I don't need a graphical interface like a programm, just to have a
nice DOS. Maybe I don't understand but Spectra is nice to play around but
not to customize and program and use it as a graphical library.

Now some question about the hardware - sorry for the long thread!

I opened the PC104 stack an I found a:
little mainboard with a DiskOnChip and lot's of unsed connectors. I now the
ISA 8 and 16bit bus but there are other cables on two modules. 3x 10 pin (
left and right of an additional 26pin and one extra) What are these for?
Then a 40pin and a 34pin - is this a IDE and Floppy port? Would be cool!

The manufacer is EUROTECH the board is a PC059610A. There is also a big ACC
Micro 2089 IC on it.

Then for the MVB/CAN bus card:
its a duagon board with a babylon D104 chip. I don't know a single thing
about how to access this board without a driver... Maybe somebody could
help me here.

Finally, something like a I/O board having a special connector for the
touchscreen and a CHIPS F65535 chip - this could be the VGA controller?!?
On the board are various serial ports, parallel ports, a loudspeaker output
(amplified). The four connectors I descripted above on the mainboard are
connected with this card. This board also have the power supply connector
(ATX) plus a battery for the BIOS or something.

So what to do with this nice board?

I don't think I can directly access the drive (well DiskOnChip rather than
DiskOnFlash). so the only way seems to use to serial port and
interlnk/intersvr on DOS.

Please share what you would suggest to me... thanks a lot!

Lukas