I am starting to have problems with my underpowered x86 board I had already. I kind of hit a wall when going further on the integration of cam for vision processing. Even though the cam is recognized by USB port, the driver stack in Win2K does not handle the cam (I had tested it in a Vista notebook). Driver on CD needs DirectX 9c – which will not load with this STPC processor (which appears to DirectX as a Cyrix). I searched everywhere for a Win2K driver on the Web – no go. If the damn board booted a more robust version of Linux than uLinux (which is bootstrapped on DOS), I would try the generic Linux Webcam drivers found all over the Net. I tried using a driver for an old Logitec “eyeball” cam I had and ran the setup, only to hit another wall – bit depth of the video. Since the only driver found with this board is a generic VGA, I only have 16 colors, even though I can get 800×600 out of it. That was the straw that broke the camels back – Probably a great board for DOS or Win98, but nothing higher.
I have already purchased another PC104 board that will handle WinXP, has all the in-outs I need, as well as standard XP functionality. I have already created my embedded version using NLite with an XP Pro disc I had before Vista. Good thing I hang on to these! I also bid on another board that will handle Debian Linux, so I will have that for possible parallel development. Although developing in .Net Studio and dropping it into the PC104 board sure will be pretty uncomplicated.