Hardware

Aleph One LART development kit

Many users of this chapter will have bought the Aleph One LART development kit. If you haven't, the information here will still be useful but references to the supplied connectors and cables will need to be adjusted to whatever equipment you are using. The Aleph One kit comprises:

LART main board with blob bootloader installed;
This Guide to ARMLinux for Developers book on paper and CD ROM;
Aleph ARMLinux distribution for LART including suitable kernels, RAMdisks and tools for the LART, as well as all the Debian 2.2release2 packages in binary and source form on 5 CDs;
JTAG adaptor board;
Parallel extension cable;
Twin-headed serial cable;
Power cable.

This is everything you need to get going (apart from a host machine); we hope you enjoy developing on it.

(We no longer sell LART kits, but you may be interested in our Balloon Board Development Kit.)

Mainboard

LART mainboard

The specifications for the LART mainboard are as follows:

220 MHz Digital SA-1100 StrongARM CPU;
32 MB EDO RAM;
4 MB Intel Fast boot block Flash memory;
power usage of less than 1W;
performance in excess of 200 MIPS.

The board can run standalone, booting an OS from Flash.

The 4MB Flash is sufficient for a:

bootloader;
compressed kernel;
compressed RAMdisk.

The LART accepts an input voltage of between 3.5 and 10 Volts, although it can be modified to accept up to 16V. The on-board DC-DC converters have an efficiency of between 90 and 95%.

Connectors

Signal

Almost all signals from the SA-1100 are available on the external connectors.

The High-speed Connector is an SMD with 0.8mm pitch and offers:

access to the 32-bit data bus;
access to all 26 address lines;
high-speed peripherals with a data rate in excess of 400 MB/second.

The Low-speed Connector is actually three separate through-hole connectors with a 2mm pitch which:

export General Purpose (GP) I/O pins and most of the data/address buses to implement ISA or PCMCIA-based peripherals;
are ideal for connecting to low-speed devices.