In some occasions my Friendly ARM suddenly stopps working and the display looks the way it does after having clicked "suspend". Then only reset can terminate this inactive status. Is that due to Friendly ARM's low quality and its lack of reliability or can I change it? Please help me!
> Is that due to Friendly ARM's low quality > and its lack of reliability or can I change it? What do you base this comment on? I have been thrashing two units for the last couple of years and except for 3 issues I have found them very reliable. Power supply voltage has to be maintained above 4.8Volts under all loading conditions. Also, I made little support brackets for the DC power connector, as they are a bit flimsy. And the power plug external and internal diameters must be the most critical mechanical interface on the whole unit. Finding the right plug for external supplies was difficult, as they seem to vary in their exact dimensions, across different brands. I think you had better describe a bit more about what you are running on the unit and what you are doing to it just before it stops. Can a stock-standard Qtopia or whatever run without problems?
Thank you for your reply, davef, I have checked the voltage and added a huge capacitor, but seemingly without success. My problem appears to be indipendent of the application and sometimes even happens right after power up before any application has been run. I am using WindowsCE5.0 and the 7" LCD. Maybe somebody else has experienced the same issue, or my problem is unique and I should buy a new board. > What do you base this comment on? Since January I am having an other problem: Everything is very slow, e.g. it takes 7 seconds to load the explorer, which used to be quite different in former times definitely! That is why I took "bad quality" into account. Thanks again, Mathias Tantau
If you use a terminal for remote access does that die as well?
> Since January I am having an other problem: Everything is very slow, > e.g. it takes 7 seconds to load the explorer, which used to be quite > different in former times definitely! That is why I took "bad quality" > into account. Software issue? Or: do you use the NAND for your filesystem? Maybe it is worn-out (due to intensely changing its content over the time or a stupid filesystem driver with a bad wear-leveling implementation).
If I switch to NOR flash and use the terminal, everything is fine as far as I can say, but under Windows CE5.0 the serial port cannot be used as a terminal and therefore doesn't respond anyway.
CE5 isn't actively supported. CE6.0r3 gets all the attention and support. Can you load the CE6 that comes with the system and try that?
I can't use WindowsCE6, because the video buffer is accessed directly by CEGraph in my application, which is only possible with WindowsCE5 as far as I know. However I have installed a newer version of WindowsCE5, where my problems don't occur. Unfortunately it is Chinese and the screen flickers a bit, but it works! So obviously this is not a hardware problem.