The Vesta SBC332 (for Single Board Computer) 68332 board has a 68332 processor, RAM, and ROM sockets, and other support circuitry needed for using a 68332 processor.
Newton Research Labs is in no way affiliated with these products or companies. The following information is based on our own experience with the products and are our own opinions. Please contact the manufacturers directly if you have questions or if you want to place orders.
The Vesta SBC332 is a 2-layer through-hole board containing a 68332, a serial level shifter, and sockets for ROM and RAM. It has two 64-pin connectors which are compatible with the Motorola BCC's connector standard.
The Vesta SBC332's main selling points are flexibility and low cost. Older versions of the SBC332 used a socket for the 68332 which would occasionally pop loose; now the 68332 is surface-mounted directly to the board, making it much more mechanically reliable. The RAM battery backing circuitry does not work as well as the Motorola BCC due to a difference in the arrangement of chip selects.
The Vesta SBC332 is the board we use most. It is fairly cheap (~$329 in single qty.), it allows us to use 256K-1MB of RAM, change ROMs frequently, and attach expansion boards we design to it easily. If you buy this board, pay close attention to the jumper settings -- that is usually what is wrong when it doesn't work.
We have recently started using Flash EEPROM in Vesta boards in place of EPROMS. The big advantages for us are that we don't have to rip apart vision systems to replace EPROMs any more, and we can just send software updates over the net to our customers.
To be able to program EEPROM in place on the Vesta SBC332, you need to make some minor hardware modifications. Here's how to do it. (We now understand that Vesta has begun manufacturing SBC332 boards already wired for EEPROM support, which will most likely make these modifications unnecessary. We'll update this information once we've tried out one of the new boards).
We have made a postscript file which prints tags for the two 64-pin connectors (this is the same pinout as the Motorola BCC). This is very useful for being able to probe the signals easily. There should be exactly 1/10th inch between each row of text for it to line up correctly with the pins. You may need to adjust the scaling for it to work properly with your printer.
From: Vesta Technology, Inc.;
7100 W. 44th Ave., Ste. 101
Wheatridge, CO 80033-4701
Tel: (303) 422-8088
FAX: (303) 422-9800
Contact: Cyndi Reish
Host: Any desktop with communications channel.
Languages: FORTH
Applies to: MC68332
SBC332 Development Environment
The Vesta SBC332 development environment is an ideal platform for prototyping and designing applications for the Motorola MC68332 microcontroller. DIP socketing allows up to one megabyte EPROM and up to one megabyte SRAM onboard. In addition to board specific support packages for the Vesta SBC332 by most major C and Kernel vendors, Vesta offers Vesta Forth Standard Edition, a 32-bit native code multitasking embedded Forth system for quick, easy development of autostart applications.
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