RE: Re: Has anybody played with these yet?

[Kevin Hawkins]

Blast - posted a really long reply via Yahoo Web interface and Yahoo said
'sorry temporarilly unavailable' and lost the reply :-(

Anyway... The MSS100's are quite different to the X-Ports and not
based on the same technology - ie the MSS100 doesn't use the X-Port part.
Peeking inside the MSS100 will reveal at least 5 chips on the support board
each of at least 40 pins each and one that I think has some 168 pins - so
that's a lot of support circuitry. I think it's a full cpu/ram processor
system and the RJ45 is just a magnetics device. I can post pics if people
wanted - it is a complex pcb. I guess something has to warrant the current
$500 price tag. The MSS100 design I think appeared before the X-Port too. I
suspect Lantronix acquired the X-Port / CoBox technology as it seems to
originate from Europe.

The X-Ports are great little devices though. When I wanted a
web/serial server for my C-Bus interface I started by looking at the
SitePlayer, got the dev kit and had to move onto the X-Port due to some
issues so got yet another dev kit. This is the route I was taking until I
was talked into the Rabbit and jumped ship yet again. I had avoided it
before as it meant learning C. Two reasons swayed me though really - I
needed UDP support for the xAP interface and I wanted to be able to
interact
between the serial data stream, the web server and dynamic data in an easy
way. On the X-Port the way you have to do this is with a Java applet and
therefore it runs client side rather than on the X-Port which was not what
I
wanted at all. I have to say I was hugely disappointed as an X-Port
developer re information and support. The tech info in the Lantronix X-Port
dev kit is almost non existant and the online support not much better (as
you will see if you peruse the Yahoo Lantronix groups, now post moderated
&
re-edited / pruned by Lantronix). Lantronix are really only interested in
supporting OEM's who are going to use thousands of the device. Once you
have
your sample X-Ports you can only buy in 50's.

The X-Port is an OEM device meaning that you add your circuitry
around it for the final design. You don't need to add a lot but you do have
to add most of what the dev kit provides ie power supply & power
regulation
(3.3V) , RS232 level conversion, reset and timer circuitry and actually the
dev kit includes a PLD (programmable logic device) to handle mode selection
and switching and a few LED's. X-Ports do what they say on the tin so to
speak and are really 'neat' devices. If you have one you'll know hat I mean
by this. How all that functionality fits in such a tiny space is amazing. I
am sure I will find many uses for the few I have here over time. The
featureset of the final X-Port product is very complete although the next
model up - the CoBox unit adds a bit more and the MSS100's more still
particularly in configuration/options (compare the docs). Lantronix
position
the MSS100 as a CoBox 'on steroids'.

The MSS100 is very much an end user product , nicely metal cased and
with PSU - as plug and play as these things can get really. You attach your
serial device to the MSS100, plug in your newtork connector - install the
COM port redirector software within Windows and voila - you have a network
enabled version of almost any serial device. You can even tunnel one MSS100
to another - even over the internet, eg home to work, and also you can
handle one to many configurations which neither the CoBox or X-Port can.

So horses for courses really - for a new product design or for the
electronics ethusiast the X-Port is ideal - for an 'end user' plug and play
solution the MSS100 is the way to go but only if you don't have the pay the
$500 price they cost new. Whilst the MSS100's are available second user on
a par with the X-Port costwise it's a no brainer really.

Kevin