Hardware Used in This Book
As we'll see in Chapter 3, Linux
supports a very wide range of hardware. For this book,
I've used a few embedded systems to test the various
procedures. Table P-1 contains the complete list
of systems I used.
Some of these systems, such as the iPAQ or the Dreamcast, are
commercial products available in the mainstream market. I included
these intentionally, to demonstrate that any willing reader can find
the materials to support learning how to build embedded Linux
systems. Sega Dreamcast consoles, for instance, are available for
less than $50 on eBay. Though they boot using a specially formatted
CD-ROM, they are one of the cheapest ways for learning cross-platform
development with Linux. You can, of course, still use an old x86 PC
for experimenting, but you are likely to miss much of the fun given
the resemblance between such systems and most development hosts.
Table P-1. Target systems used throughout this book
|
PPC
|
TQ components TQM860L
|
80 MHz
|
16 MB
|
8 MB flash
|
|
SuperH
|
Sega Dreamcast
|
200 MHz
|
16 MB
|
CD-ROM (see text)
|
|
ARM
|
Compaq iPAQ 3600
|
206 MHz
|
32 MB
|
16 MB flash
|
|
x86
|
Kontron Teknor VIPer 806
|
100 MHz
|
40 MB
|
32 MB CompactFlash
|
|
x86
|
COTS
Pentium
|
100 MHz
|
8 MB
|
32 MB DiskOnChip
|
Apart from running on a slew of embedded systems, Linux also runs on
a wide variety of workstations. Throughout this book, I used the
hosts presented in Table P-2. Though the Apple
PowerBook served as my main development host for the book, I had to
use an x86 host for some aspects of building x86-based embedded
targets, because some software components cannot be cross-compiled
for an x86 target on a non-x86 host. Both GRUB and LILO, for example,
have to be built on an x86 host. I can report, nevertheless, that I
wrote this entire book on a PowerBook host running the Yellow Dog
Linux distribution. This is yet another sign that Linux changes the
computing world's landscape by providing one
standard operating environment across a very fragmented world of
hardware.
Table P-2. Host systems used throughout this book
|
PPC
|
Apple PowerBook
|
400 MHz
|
128 MB
|
> GB hard disk
|
|
x86
|
Pentium II
|
350 MHz
|
128 MB
|
> GB hard disk
|
To illustrate the range of target architectures on which Linux can be
used, I varied the target hardware I used in the examples between
chapters. Table P-3 lists the target architecture
used in each chapter. Though each chapter is based on a different
architecture, the commands given in each chapter apply readily to
other architectures as well. If, for instance, an example in a
chapter relies on the arm-linux-gcc command, which
is the gcc compiler for ARM, the same example
would work for a PPC target by using the
powerpc-linux-gcc command instead. Whenever more
than one architecture is listed for a chapter, the main architecture
discussed is the first one listed. The example commands in Chapter 5, for instance, are mainly centered around the
ARM, but there are also a few references to PPC commands.
Though Table P-3 lists the target being used in
example for each chapter, it provides no indication as to the host
being used, because it makes no difference to the discussion.
Instead, unless specific instructions are given to the contrary, the
host's architecture is always different from the
target's. In Chapter 4, for
example, I used a PPC host to build tools for an x86 target. The same
instructions could, nevertheless, be carried out on a SPARC or an
S/390 with little or no modification. Note that most of the content
of the early chapters is architecture independent, so there is no
need to provide any architecture-specific commands.
|
