Circuit Cellar Online -This Month

THE MAGAZINE FOR COMPUTER APPLICATIONS Circuit Cellar Online offers articles illustrating creative solutions and unique applications through complete projects, practical tutorials, and useful design techniques.

	ALL ABOARD THE CLEAN ENGINE
		Automotive Emissions and Onboard Diagnostics by John West & Mark Stachew As efforts are made to keep our environment pollution-free, automobiles are being put to the test with even stricter standards. To meet these emissions requirements, manufacturers have turned to more electronically controlled systems using sensors. Strategies are getting more complicated and require more control code. John and Mark see a future where automotive microcontrollers will start to look more like desktop systems in terms of bandwidth, "evolving faster than you can step on the gas." June 2001
	PORTING MICROC/OS-II TO THE TS-2800 EMBEDDED PC
		by Robert Bowen As his designs started getting more complicated, and he found they were not reusable from system to system, Robert began to turn his focus to new development programs. Demonstrating the advantages of using an embedded PC and real-time kernel, he took advantage of open source programming tools and searched for a real-time executive. It all makes for more capability, complex I/O, and high-speed data acquisition. June 2001
	USING A BOOT MONITOR IN EMBEDDED SYSTEMS
		Part 2: Building on the Basics by Ed Sutter Last month, Ed got us started with the exception handlers in place and basic flash interfaces initialized. Picking up where he left off last month, this time around he starts the process of breaking away from just being a simple boot monitor. Moving forward, you can now overlay a format on the section of flash memory to be allocated to the tiny flash file system. The design goal is to provide a good amount of flexibility without overdoing it. June 2001
	AN ELECTRONIC LITESHOW DISPLAY
		Part 1: The Electronics Behind the Lights by James Antonakos James has a fascination with electronics, mainly flashing lights on and off. His LiteShow display of 384 lamps makes for an interesting article this month. By putting groups of lamps together, you can create letters, words, and graphics, all individually controlled by only three signals from the PC printer port. Working with some students, he shows them how to design their own version of a printed circuit board. June 2001
	SPECIAL FEATURE • TAKE MY COMPUTER, PLEASE!
		Part 3: Retro Humor Ciarcia Style by Steve Ciarcia Way back at the dawn of the microcomputer age, Steve Ciarcia was blazing a trail (sometimes literally) through the hardware and software issues of the era. At the request of many of our readers, we've brought back a series of articles, written by Steve, chronicling the design adventures of those early days in the Circuit Cellar. This month, it's chapter one from Take My Computer, Please! June 2001
	AND THE LIST GOES ON...
		Putting Together Parts Lists by George Martin With promises of fame, George tries to entice you into submitting an entry to Trinity's Fire Fighting Home Robot Contest. But before you build that bot, you're going to have to buy the parts. It may seem like a daunting task at times, but whatever you do, you need the parts to do it. The simplest way to go about it is to create a list and a purchase order. From there, you can start cashing those winning checks. June 2001
	ESCAPE TO SF
		by Tom Cantrell The Embedded System Conference always provides a lot of food for thought, and Tom shows us that this year's event was no exception. Having outgrown San Jose, San Fran is now home to ESC, with a whole new wave of applications opening up. Voice recognition gear was probably the hottest item on the scene, along with web-enabling and listening chips. Will the spoken word replace keyboards? Watch and listen for the answer. June 2001
	ASK US
		Got Questions? Want Answers? ASK US Browse Q&As from other engineers or submit your tough technical questions to the ASK US team and let us help keep your project on track or simplify your design decision.
	WHAT'S YOUR ENGINEERING QUOTIENT?
		Test Your EQ presents some basic engineering problems for you to test your engineering quotient. Problem 1—What is resistance as seen between terminals A and B in the following infinite network? Problem 2—What is the output of the following circuit, assuming that all the flip-flops are reset at power-on. What is this circuit popularly known as? . The rest of this month's questions
	RESOURCE LINKS
		Each month Circuit Cellar's Resource Links provide helpful links and information on a variety of featured topics. How LCDs Work by Rick Prescott HyperTransport by Brant Schroeder Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP) by Naveen PN Jini Technology by Naveen PN
	NEW PRODUCT NEWS—edited by Rick Prescott
		Temperature and Humidity Measurments LCD Backlight Driver Automatic Ringdown Unit Touch-Pad Remote Control Flat Panel-Based Computer System Othello Direct Conversion Radio Passive Entry Transponder/Encoder Hand-Held Terminal New Product submissions may be sent to Rick Prescott 4 Park St. Vernon, CT 06066
	PRIORITY INTERRUPT
		An Embedded Future by Steve Ciarcia Read Steve Ciarcia's latest editorial exclusively presented by AVNET. June 2001
	CIRCUIT CELLAR's Print Magazine
		Take advantage of more than 12 years of engineering editorial experience with Circuit Cellar's print magazine! Full of unique, application-oriented articles. Come see what's in this month's publication! June 2001
	COPYRIGHT
		CIRCUIT CELLAR� Online, (ISSN 1527-8131) and Circuit Cellar are published monthly by Circuit Cellar Incorporated, 4 Park Street, Suite 20, Vernon, CT 06066 (860) 875-2751. Entire contents copyright � 2001 by Circuit Cellar Incorporated and eChips, Inc. All rights reserved. Circuit Cellar and Circuit Cellar INK are the registered trademarks of Circuit Cellar Inc. Reproduction of this publication in whole or in part without written consent from Circuit Cellar Inc. is prohibited. Disclaimer