News and New Products

EPIC computer features GPS, data acquisition, and expansion

By Warren Webb -- EDN, 7/22/2004

The recently introduced 486/586-based SBC4495 single-board controller from Micro/sys comes in the new 4.5×6.5-in. EPIC (Embedded Platform for Industrial Computing)-standard footprint. The board includes a temperature-compensated data-acquisition system with an eight-channel, 14-bit ADC with simultaneous reads and an eight-channel, 14-bit DAC (Picture). The onboard GPS also provides timing that can synchronize the data acquisition of geographically distant systems to within 190 nsec, along with providing location and altitude.

A built-in expansion slot is compatible with a selection of off-the-shelf CardBus products. In addition to PC-compatible features, such as SVGA and four serial ports, the new computer also includes 100Base-T Ethernet support, 64 Mbytes of SDRAM, and a CompactFlash socket. The onboard STMicroelectronics (www.st.com) STPC Atlas processor offers speeds as high as 133 MHz, an on-chip cache, 64-bit DRAM access, and hardware floating-point functions. If necessary, you can add I/O expansion to the SBC4495 through PC/104 or PC/104-plus cards.

The SBC4495 can boot DOS, Windows 98, Linux, Windows CE, VxWorks, and other PC-compatible operating systems. A free development kit includes cables, sample software, and full documentation. Prices for the basic SBC4495 start at $495 (one).

Micro/sys Inc, 1-818-244-4600, www.embeddedsys.com.