Embedded system for network disk management

The paper presents hardware and software issues of the designed device and reveals the significance of free operating systems in the embedded area. The prototype system for network disk management is based on the 32-bit ARM system-on-chip microcontroller which cosists of internal memories, multiple communication interfaces as well as hardware implementation of Fast Ethernet interface. Moreover, the designed board is also equipped with USB to IDE interface bridge, external physical layer of Ethernet interface for remote access and operations, external SDRAM and Flash memories for system image storage purpose as well as data acquisition blocks combining serial DACs and ADCs. the open source, free Linux operating system distribution with self prepared and compiled kernel has been ported to handle system functionality.