TRON News Items for June 2005

Personal Media Announces Low-Cost T-Engine Training Board

Personal Media Corporation announced on June 27 that it would begin selling sometime after August a low cost T-Engine training board that comes standard equipped with 10/100Base-T LAN function that includes a TCP/IP protocol stack. The standard price of the new T-Engine training board, which has tentatively been named "Teaboard," will be 47,250 yen, consumption tax included. According to Personal Media's press release, electrical power can be supplied to Teaboard via the host personal computer's USB connection, and since it is based on the standard T-Engine specification, it can be enhanced with an expansion board and other add-on boards that are marketed separately. Among these are expansion boards that can be used to add a GUI to Teaboard. The company also said a textbook that includes sample programs will be bundled with the Teaboard development kit. The Teaboard hardware and software specifications, plus a list of hardware and software optional items marketed separately are given below. For further information and/or sales inquiries, please contact Personal Media's Sales Department.

Table 1 Teaboard* CPU Board Functions**
CPU Freescale MC9328MX1 (i.MX1, ARM920T core, 200 MHz)
Flash ROM 2 megabytes
RAM 16 megabytes
SD Card 1 slot
RS-232C D-Sub 9 pin, 2 channel
LAN 10/100 Base-T
General-purpose
switch
Push switch 2 bit, toggle switch 4 bit, DIP switch 4 bit
7 segment LED 2 places
LED 8 bit
Buzzer Piezo buzzer
Temperature
sensor
-25 degrees C to +85 degrees C
I/O connector
D/A, A/D convertor, GPIO (DIO)
Expansion connector
Local bus
External dimensions
120 mm x 75 mm (without protuberances) 
* Provisional name
** Planned

Table 2 Teaboard* Software Configuration**
Target (software on the Teaboard side)
T-Monitor PMC T-Monitor
T-Kernel PMC T-Kernel (MMU compatible version)
T-Kernel Extension
PMC T-Kernel Extension (Process Manager, File Manager, etc)
Device drivers
SD Card, RS-232C, LAN, etc.
Middleware TCP/IP protocol stack
CLI
Command line interpreter (file operations, batch processing, etc.)
Tools SD Card partition creator, formatter, etc.
Host Development Environment (MS Windows)
Compiler GNU C/C++ compiler (made compatible with T-Kernel)
Debugger GDB (source level debugging)
Libraries ANSI C libraries, T-Kernel-related libraries, etc.
Bundled Documentation
Manual
T-Kernel Specification, manuals for libraries, development environment, etc.
Teaching
materials
Various types of sample programs, text teaching materials
* Provisional name
** Planned

Table 3 Teaboard* Optional Items**
Expansion Board
  • LCD interface, touch panel interface, microphone input, speaker output, USB (Host)
LCD Board (standard price: 47.250 yen, consumption tax included)
  • The expansion board optional item (sold separately) is necessary to use this.
PMC T-Shell Development Kit
  • This is a higher level of PMC T-Kernel Extension; it is middleware that makes it possible to easily realize GUI functions. This makes it possible to utilize even in embedded devices more than 170,000 characters cultivated through the development of the "Cho Kanji" multi-kanji operating system for personal computer use.
* Provisional name
** Planned for sale separately

Personal Media Puts New Cho Kanji 4/Genkoo Purosessa 2 Preinstalled Notebook PC on Sale

Personal Media Corporation announced on June 22 that it had begun marketing a new IBM-PC/AT-compatible notebook personal computer with its Cho Kanji 4 operating system and bundled applications plus the upgraded version of its Japanese language manuscript processing software, Genkoo Purosessa 2, preinstalled. The new hardware/software set, which bears the product name "Cho Kanji Note R4GG," is being marketed at 267,540 yen, consumption tax included. In addition, to Cho Kanji 4 and Genkoo Purosessa 2, Cho Kanji Note R4GG comes with Microsoft Corp.'s Windows XP Professional (SP2) operating system installed in a separate partition from which a wireless LAN function can be utilized. The specification for Cho Kanji Note R4GG is as follows:

CPU Intel Pentium M processor 1.2 GHz
Chip set Intel 915 GMS Express
Main memory 512 megabytes (1,024 megabytes maximum)
HDD 40 gigabyte (Ultra ATA100), with about 8 gigabytes assigned to Cho Kanji 4
Display 10.4 inch, 1,024 x 768 dot TFT LCD capable of displaying 32-bit color (external display possible)
Communications function 100Base-TX/10Base-T LAN
(IEEE802.11a(J52)/b/g, WPA-AES/TKIP-compatible, WiFi-based wireless LAN and modem with Windows XP only)
External dimensions 229 mm x 183.5 mm x 24.2/41.6 mm
Weight Approximately 999 grams
Resume function can be used with Windows XP

Personal Media's Japanese language manuscript processing software is the first separately marketed word processing software application that can process a complete, unabridged kanji character set. Moreover, it's output can be transferred to standard desktop publishing software on other personal computer architectures, such as MS Windows, via a system called the TRON Font Traceability System. As a result, the Japanese publishing industry is very interested in the Cho Kanji 4 and Genkoo Purosessa combination to rationalize the processing of rarely used kanji, which up to now have been handled as user defined fonts independently on a company by company basis.