Next step

i looked at the DVD and tried DNW the Windows download tool. It talks about USB but it is not clear how to use it, while I know what to do with RS232. So rather than try and figure out USB at this point I ordered the USB RS232 converter from Industrial Arm Works, $16 as opposed to hours or days of work seemed like a deal to me.
Next I plugged the board in and turned it on. Lots of neat little apps and the touch screen works OK with the fingers which is how it will be used.
So a few thoughts on architecture. At present the HC11 does two things to the display, paints the screen, there are 26 of them and then adds specfic information to them. The first action is will now be a "Screen xx" command to the Mini2440 which will now hold the screen information and paint the appropriate screen and then "goto x y" command which will move the cursor to the correct location and then "puts " or "printf " . This is similar to what the HC11 does now, but instead of putchar pointing to the 64 x 240 LCD as it does now, it will point to the serial port.
One issue is that now we write some numbers to the display in T6963 graphics mode with a 16 x 12 font to make them more visible, so the question comes up is do I need a graphics package of some sort to do the same on the Mini2440 or does the C compile already contain some sort of library that can do this?. I will find out in due course. Also the 5 mechanical push buttons that the HC11 checks will be replaced by 5 areas of the display that can be touched and the Mini2440 will send a code "t x" to the HC11, now not necessarily limited to 5.
It appears under Linux, the only possibility is download and run, no debugging possible, no single stepping or breakpoints. However this should be OK since the code will be as described above, pretty simple and obvious in its effect. All control, microsecond timing and safety considerations will remain with the HC11 with the Mini2440 as a slave
Now to investigate the gcc compiler while the RS232 doo hickey is in the post.

jazzing up a laser

So the need exists to put a fancier interface on a cosmetic laser designed about 15 years ago. I first thought of a Cortex M3 system designed from scratch, but that seemed a lot of work, so how about some SBC which talks to the existing HC11 board and does the LCD and touch screen.
Right now the HC11 has a 64 x 240 b/w LCD with the T6963 controller and 5 push buttons
The x86 PC type seemed expensive and probably overkill anyway, but the ARM types seemed cheaper and with prices ranging from $150 to $1500, seemed a go , so I ordered the Mini2440 at $150 with the 7" VGA 800 x 600 display(well $195 including the SDK). Documentations seems sketchy and i dont speak Chinese, but I find it totally impossilbe I can try something more expensive. I know nothing whatever about Linux and it seems for what I want to do I don't need an operating system at all, but an OS provides a layer of abstraction so that when the board I have chosen goes away, it will not be too incredibly difficult to port the code to another board that runs Linux . It arrives and the first issue is to find a computer that reads a DVD and has a serial port, which is generally mutually exclusive. For one I can see no reason to run Linux on the host.