Efika motherboard

Written by Administrator, on 03-11-2007 21:30

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The Efika motherboard is a cheap (99$ US from genesy USA), very small form factor board interesting for embedded projects.

Characteristics:

Freescale MPC5200B PowerPC SoC up to 400MHz
118mm x 153mm x 38mm (unfortunatly it's not compliant with the Mini-itx standard)
128MB onboard DDR RAM
44-pin IDE connector
10/100Mbit/s Ethernet
2x USB ports 1.1
1x RS232 Serial port
Stereo Audio out, Microphone and Line-input
33/66MHz PCI with bundled 90° AGP riser slot
RoHS Compliant

Pro et cons:

Con:

Not Mini-ITX compliant
no ACPI support
no memory expansion slot
small form factor AGP port only
AGP riser only, no PCI riser in the package
PCI port 3.3V only

"The Efika includes a 66MHz 3.3V-keyed PCI slot. With the bundled 90° riser, standard graphics cards can also be used. The PCI bus supports only a single device, so if multiple PCI cards are desired, a bridged riser card must be used to provide the correct signalling. Connecting 5V PCI adapters (which may be mistakenly keyed as "universal" for 3.3V and 5V operation) may damage your Efika. Please be wary of PCI card specifications."

Pro:

Very cheap
Very small board
Everything onboard
Very very low power consumption (<5W)
(great) Openfirmware , permit to boot from USB or from the network via DHCP+TFTP+NFS, serial console connexion available since the initialisation

Linux (debian) installation

Installation through network:

First, you need a tftp server: Install tftpd to a linux machine (apt-get install tftpd)
Copy the di_efika file (from http://www.efika.de/index_en.html) in the /srv/tftp directory (it can depend of the tftpd server and configuration)
Connect the efika and the tftp server and then start the efika. At the openfirmware prompt tape:
boot eth:IP_SERVER di_efika console=ttyPSC0

Installation with an USB key:

Rq: unfortunately many USB keys are not well recognized

Copy the di_efika file (http://www.efika.de/index_en.html) on an usb key. Start the Efika and tape at the openfirmware prompt:
boot hd0:0 di_efika console=ttyPSC0

Serial parameters for minicom: 115200 bauds, 8 bits, no parity, 1 stopbit