Bringing Back the Good 'ol Days

The TS-4400 System on Module provides a window into the world of optimized, and simplified retro-programming thanks to the 486 like x86 Vortex86EX core from DMP. Modern amenities include massive 256MB DDR3 RAM memory, Fast Ethernet, USB 2.0, SATA controller, and Internal Peripheral Controllers (IPC) with DMA and interrupt timer/counters. For those needing to interact with truly retro peripherals an 8-bit I/O space ISA compatible bus is available. These features give the TS-4400 a distinct advantage over microcontrollers while maintaining low power and a very fast boot up time of under .25 seconds. Other features include high speed ADCs and DACs, 80+ GPIO, customizable FPGA, TTL UARTs, and more.

Embedded Programmable Platform

Unlike programming with an operating system abstraction layer, DOS enables deterministic, bare-metal programming of the hardware using IO read/write calls. With fast real time performance that can beat out most modern microcontrollers and complicated RTOS implementations, DOS enables the modern software developer to have direct access to the wide variety of interfaces available on the TS-4400. An optimal platform for bringing together legacy ISA or PC104 based peripherals with modern USB devices, analog sensors, massive amounts of memory both on board RAM and direct access to solid state SATA or microSD Flash memory. The TS-4400 comes with DOS example code for interfacing with the full mix of interfaces modern and legacy embedded systems require.

FreeRTOS Ready

Multi-threaded processing is trivial and proven for the TS-4400 thanks to FreeRTOS's deterministic threading support. FreeRTOS is designed to support hard RTOS requirements with tested reliability with a simple API. FreeRTOS is a scalable, real time kernel designed specifically for small embedded systems that makes low-power edge devices easy to program, deploy, secure, connect, and manage. FreeRTOS leads the market with millions of deployments in most all industries, making it the de-facto standard for RTOS kernels.

Next Generation of the TS-5400

When paired with the TS-8554, the TS-4400 is a straightforward, low-risk upgrade path for existing TS-5400 customers. The TS-8554-4400 maintains compatibility in electrical, mechanical, and software characteristics of the TS-5400. For more details, see the TS-8554-4400 product page (coming soon).

TS-SILO Power Reserve Solution

With TS-SILO super capacitors onboard, you’ll have ample time to gracefully shutdown the system or run last gasp communications when power is cut. This allows the TS-4400 to be ultra reliable in the field.

Software

The TS-4400 comes preloaded with FreeDOS v1.2 and is FreeRTOS ready. FreeDOS doubles as both a bootloader and a minimal command prompt environment optimized to support embedded applications. Programs can be written in 32-bit mode which allows usage of all 256 MB RAM and microSD storage. Supported languages include C/C++, Pascal, BASIC, and other DOS-era languages.

Software development is typically done on a separate development machine using tools like Open WatCOM, DJGPP, or QBASIC (keeping in mind, there is no VGA video output). Once binaries have been compiled, a simple transfer via USB drive completes the workflow. Other workflows could include transferring files over Ethernet (wget, curl, htget, etc.) or serial port (lrzsz, kermit, etc.).

Furthermore, the USB-4400-DEV USB thumb drive is preloaded with a complete FreeDOS environment with debugging tools and pre-downloaded compilers as previously mentioned, and example code. You can boot from the USB drive and develop on-board or simply use it as a simple file transfer medium.