6th August 2005

Murmurings.

Wearwulf stalled sometime back for two reasons:

1. The LPC2106 was not well suited to fast bit-banging. Too much time would have been wasted filling the display with data, leaving little processor time for the other tasks.
2. The design had lost its elegance. The LPC2106 was intially chosen to provide lots of free I/O pins. In the end, all the pins were in use, and a separate microcontroller for the Geek Port was introduced. I just wasn't in love with the design anymore.

However, things change:

1. Philips brought out the LPC2138 which had a high speed synchronous serial port buffered from memory. This, coupled with generating the remaining signals on the CPLD, would liberate the processor and the I/O pins.
   
   My interest in the Wearwulf design was rekindled.
   
2. Better yet, Philips brought out the LPC2148, which has everything the LPC2138 has, but also includes a fast USB device port.
   
   This chip is perfect for my needs!

I'm going to do a little house-cleaning in here over the next few weeks, but hope to get some information about the new Wearwulf design up soon.