Hey,
My company is considering building a custom board based on the AT91SAM9G45-EKES to run QT embedded linux or possibly windows CE. Having the ORCAD files available is a great start, and the chip seems perfect for our application. We don't know much about ARM-based systems however, so I had some questions:

I see that the AT91SAM9G45-EKES board has 4 DDR2 chips on it, as well as NAND flash, SPI Dataflash, Serial EEPROM, and 2 SD card slots.

We want our board to be as low cost as possible though, and I don't think we need all those components.

I'd like to make a board that had as little memory as possible (64 MB is plenty for us) and if we can just use a single SD card and no NAND flash to store our OS and programs, that would probably be best for us (so we can easily change out OS images for different applications).

I'm modifying the schematic myself for our first rev, for a proof of concept, and we're going to have a local shop do the PCB layout, so can I just delete components from the schematic that are not necessary?

I could probably then delete or hard route some of the jumpers too, right?

I've already deleted the Audio processing stuff (don't need audio for this) and the TV out circuit. I'm just really wondering what the minimum memory needed is, and if I'm even going about this the right way.

I know I'm a bit in over my head right now, but I learn well from diving into things.

Any advice/links/etc is greatly appreciated. Thanks!
-Taylor

Hi,
I am also starting with a minimum design, and have exactly the same questions .
Did you already find some answers on your questions?
Did you try to implement DDR memory with 16 bit data bus so only one chip is necessary?
Any help is appreciated

Marc

I spoke to a guy at ATMEL, and he instructed me on what I could remove. You can indeed just snip most stuff out, the dev kit just has everything there so you can try it all.

I realized though that the best thing to do is buy the dev kit and familiarize yourself with what you're using. Once you get one and start to understand how to program, etc, you can say "Yeah, I need this part, but not that one."

We actually put that design on hold and are going with a simpler processor for our first foray into the ARM world. Everything we have now runs off a PIC and is about 10 years old. It's aged pretty well but we'd like more power, so even a low end ARM looks good. I got a SAM3U dev kit and learned the basic, but then realized ATMEL is never going to actually *ship* a SAM3 part, so I've started designing based on a SAM7, and actually just brought up my first board yesterday. They're much, much simpler and a great intro to ARM chips, if you can use them.

And for my board, I mostly just copied the OLIMEX H256 schematic, which they have here: http://www.olimex.com/dev/sam7-h256.html Its a barebones minimum part count board, just like what I had been looking for with the other processor. OLIMEX sells SAM9 boards too so they might be a good place to start.

I've also recently met some other people who might be able to help, but their time is not cheap, and I have no idea if they're even available. I'd just suggest going with an OLIMEX dev board to start, and then design your own based off that schematic.
-Taylor

Hi Taylor,

Thanks for the information, i have been looking to your solution. This CPU is not usefull in my design i need Win CE all appliction with GUI designs are written in C#.

I will take contact with an Atmel FAE.

I have found other interresting information look to www.opencircuits.com/Linuxstamp_II_9260
all information is free PCB, schematics, software ...

There is also a version for SAM9G20 and a lot of other projects. With low component count.

Regards
Marc