Freescale Tower Dev Platform - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Smokey
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 22, 2013, 07:25:02 pm
content: I just got an email from digikey advertizing cheap small embedded platforms that could compete with raspi and one of the things was the Freescale Tower system. I'd never heard of this before, but I love backplane systems and this thing is FULL of backplane (sideplane?) goodness! I have no experience with it, but the design strikes me as a really good idea. It looks really clean and super expandable in a tight package.This PDF has the overview and the available modules.http://www.freescale.com/files/microcontrollers/doc/fact_sheet/TWRFS.pdfAnyone used this system?

author: Corporate666
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 22, 2013, 10:05:41 pm
content: Haven't used it but I got an ad thing from Freescale about it a while back and it looks really neat. Would love to hear feedback from anyone who has taken the plunge!

author: andersm
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 22, 2013, 10:30:27 pm
content: I've looked at them, but I don't like the idea of being bound to Freescale's tools. IIRC the backplane boards ("elevators") aren't too expensive, it could be neat to use them as a standard platform for my own designs.

author: westfw
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 23, 2013, 05:24:25 am
content: I have one, from back when it was the only one they had.It's reasonably nice. The decision to use PCIe connectors for the bus means that connectors are cheap and board-edge PCBs aren't awful to design. But the connectors themselves have a pretty dense pinout.It's not clear that the bus, at least on the "primary" PCIe connector, is "well designed." It doesn't have many interleaved grounds, even on the relatively high-speed signals (Ethernet mac/phy connections.)You can, of course, use OSSW tools with the boards.

author: ehughes
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 12, 2015, 03:45:31 pm
content: If anyone interested, I have elevators that for a 2 card stack:http://www.2pl-1.com/twr-elev-2/

author: neslekkim
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 12, 2015, 04:32:36 pm
content: I tried to find prices on this on Farnell, but ended up to think it was very expensive, but maybe i found the wrong parts.. I haven't found my way around the Freescale site either to find what products makes up what.That 2card elevator is reasonably cheap though. so maybe I misunderstood the listings on the Farnell site (which also is a big mess, imho...)

author: ehughes
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 12, 2015, 06:31:13 pm
content: The 2 card elevator is not an official Freescale product (you have to purchase through the store on my site). It is on their site under teh 3rd party section but is hard to find :-(As far as general tower stuff, start here:http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/homepage.jsp?code=TOWER_HOME&nodeId=0152101A026740You usually just start with the CPU you want to work with and go from there. They have elevators to plug in 4 cards. I have found that a "4-stack" is pretty big. That is why I made the elevators for a "2-stack". It is a pretty nice package.-Eli

author: ehughes
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 13, 2015, 01:18:12 pm
content: Also, since Freescale and NXP will me merging, there may be some interesting Tower Cards with NXP processors.It is nice to have to prototyping format where you can get all the pins out.Also, if anyone is interesting, I have a tower card template for Altium Designer

author: denneyaa
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 31, 2015, 12:24:28 am
content: We use these all the time during really early development, once component selection is done but the hardware for the product isn't complete. They work really well as long as you can get the environment that you are wanting to work in setup. We use them with segger j-link programmer,IAR, and eclipse. The nice thing is being able quickly create different boards with the components that you need or are not already provided.