[ECOS] What processor to use?

[Paul Taylor <ptaylor at ashdown-electronics dot co dot uk>]

I am designing an embedded board which needs an ethernet connection.  I
am considering using ECOS but I am unsure of whether or not it is the
best solution for me to use.  I have looked at the documentation but
would like some comments from people who have gone through the procedure
of using ECOS on a custom designed board so I can get a better feel for
whether it is worth me going down this route.

Basically I need processor + flash + RAM + ethernet.

I would like to use the minimum of hardware, and I think that this may
be one of the Atmel Arm devices (with onboard FLASH + SRAM) along with a
CS8900 ethernet chip.  This gives me a two chip processor solution.  My
hardware (DACs/ADCs digital IO) can all be interfaced over a very simple
bus - I don't need PCI or anything high performance as my application is
pretty simple.

I believe ECOS would be a good solution because of the ethernet driver
is available + c compilers + libs available, and I can develop this from
my Linux system.

My questions are as follows:

(***NOTE I am only looking for pointers/ball park figures so that I can
get an idea of whether ECOS is suitable for my project)

(1) Is there a better hardware solution to run ECOS on (other that the
two chips solution mentioned above)

(2) What sort of size would a kernel + TCP/IP protocol take in terms of
FLASH and RAM.  

(3) How difficult and typically how much time is it to get ECOS working
on custom hardware.  I don't necessarily want to get a debugger
working.  Just want to get the embedded software on the target, and any
debugging info will be logged over ethernet or serial port.

(4) I have developed multithreaded/socket based programs under Linux. 
Is developing under ECOS very different to this sort of programming
environment, i.e. would I need to go through a steep learning curve to
get something running under ECOS.

TIA

Paul Taylor.




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