OESF Portables Forum
Everything Else => Distros, Development, and Model Specific Forums => Archived Forums => PocketPenguin => Topic started by: Da_Blitz on September 21, 2006, 09:04:26 am
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intresting things have been happening latley with freescale, in 30 days (i i remeber correctly) they get sold to new owners, what this means i dont really know as i havent looked at the proposed plans if any are even avalible
anyway there was a new product on the market that was simmilar to what i had in mind in terms of casing, its a pxa270 chip (xscale) but it has wifi, bluetooth, keyboard and more.
some notable features (read must have) are:
ethernet
128MB of ram
8 hour batter life
20GB drive
USB host (most likly full speed)
remeber i am mainly designing this as a portable office and have recently been eyeing the flybook and lifebook after seeing them in person however this device seems to fill 90% of what i was planning to chuck in there, the only things missing seem to be video out and a video card
anyway links:
http://www.slashgear.com/more-details-on-t...reen-201720.php (http://www.slashgear.com/more-details-on-the-s-xgen-disappointing-screen-201720.php)
http://www.seamlessinternet.com/s-xgen/specs.html (http://www.seamlessinternet.com/s-xgen/specs.html)
http://www.slashgear.com/s-xgen-umpc-field...oard-141644.php (http://www.slashgear.com/s-xgen-umpc-fields-unusual-keyboard-141644.php)
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very close indeed.
If the PP is like this with vga, linux and video out, it will be amazing-- and hopefully a little smaller?
or, if the screen gets improved are you suiggesting that we port linux to it? As it is, i wouldn't trade my Z in for it, though it is pretty cool
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the port is what i am talking about, there are some problems with this project, mainly i am keeping myself very busy at the mooment
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the port is what i am talking about, there are some problems with this project, mainly i am keeping myself very busy at the mooment
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It certainly looks like a very interesting device with many if not most of the things we have been talking about. The only concern seems to be the screen really - the resolution mentioned seems a bit odd to say the least. However, if that were to change it might make a lot of sense just to do a port to an existing peice of hardware - assuming it does actually become a reality and is widely available.
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thoght that this is the best place to post this
at the moment the futre of this project is uncertin, i am currently working full time and trying to teach myself xen for a side project that has alot of potential while at the same time battling my OS (its a combination of things but involves fedora core 5, / on lvm on sw raid, nvidia kernel modules)
what is done:
feature set wise its basically locked, i know what can go in as a minimum but what i dont know is what is the maximum i can cram in
chipsets: i know most of them, next is to check if i can get them (just one email) basically i need an audio chip and perhaps a lcd screen interface chip
i may take 2 weeks off in a week or two, at the very least i will have more time to spend on the project so if you see me online at all i recomend that you send me a message telling me to look for chips and work on the project more.
once i have finalised the parts i have to read the manuals and work out which misc chips i need, once that is done then i should have the plans for the prototype done reletivly quickly
i am considering spreading the word about the project a bit more as i would like to spend more time on this project and less working, so does anyone know of a company who may be willing to sponser a project like this?
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Trolltech, Freescales new owners, Fedora (If we made a Fed port)
Not many electronics companies DO open source.
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acutally a number of them do provide patches for linux as its a cheap way to prove your platform works without the ce licseing costs and it allaw rapid development in the short term, once it works then you port to CE and affer it as a choice
however are you implying that trolltech bought freescale?
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What the heck are you taking?
You asked for companies. I named 3.
Trolltech: Their entire company is based on an open source OS, so is Fedora, and I'd have thought Fedora would have liked the idea of official support for a Fedora Pocket Network Admin Workstation
And the new Freescale owners, whoever they may be.
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sorry missed your point
at the moment i have in a way found a sponser of the project however its a bit of a "ill scratch your back and you scratch mine" so i have to delay this project abit. but in my opinion this maight well be a good thing
the advantage is that the casing will be taken care of and it will be done properly but by waiting it will allow me to see how HTC moves as well as all they have to do is add usb host to one of thier mobile phone range and they would probelly be a better choice (or video out)
anyway i should know more in a week or 2
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here's another ready-made PXA270 module from Anders:
http://www.anders.co.uk/systems_product.asp?prodID=6993 (http://www.anders.co.uk/systems_product.asp?prodID=6993)
looks like quite a promising option...
"The CM-X270 range combines Intel PXA270 processors, 128MB SDRAM, a 512MB Flash Disk, with wear-levelling, and many vital computing peripherals. For embedded applications, the CM-X270W offers PCI, 100Mbit Ethernet, 3 x UARTs, GPIO lines, I2C, SPI, LPC and a QuickCapture video input port, as well as many other essential interfaces.
The world’s first System on Module (SOM) with 802.11 Wireless LAN on-board, the CM-X270L is 40% smaller than a credit card, or alternatively the CM-X270W features an advanced multimedia accelerator, supporting up to SXGA (1280 x 1024) resolution with 8MB of dedicated VRAM and MPEG2/4 hardware decoding."
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this one keeps on cropping up. very nice but i would really like to see how far i can push this design. the onboard video card is nice however.
perhaps if we can get a price i may think about it as a fall back
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I think the key with the anders one is that it's designed for a modular computer; this might be a really good or really useless feature.
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after looking at my current usggestion it seems making it modular can be done in more than one way
chosing this module would speed up design buti feel thati would have to make a sacrifice or two latter down the track
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of course, you could build early units from these modules, and then produce a monolithic design using the same chipsets for mass production, it might help generate demand and get the software guys on board. You could learn a lot about the design from it, especially the interfacing to the peripherals... and they have a linux BSP too.
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actually that would be no diffrent from just using a Z at the moment, on the plus side the software guys already have them
learining to design is somthing i have done already and i am not afraid to taclk a new design, the only things that are really slowing me down is are:
screen, finding a manufacturer that makes them (not surplus stock)
software (i dont want to be breaking the law now would i
case, secondary really but i am keeping it in mind
apart form thati have everything ready to go and satrt designing boards there are one or two others (such as wifi) but moving it onto USB means its alot less of an issue for me
BSP = drivers, toolchain and a flashing util, considering that drivers are a non issue, toolchains are easy enough to get and the thing can bootload over usb or serial (hence download a program to flash itself) the BSP is not needed that badly
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- I think software will be a real issue for this platform. It's one thing to hack up a bootable command line, it's another entirely to write suites of apps from PIM to wardriving, not to mention just getting X to run stably.
- I've been tossing about the idea of giving the OS a go myself, but therre are numerous impediments:
1. I just bought a house, and have a monstrous list of things to do for it. I probably have over 500 man-hours to do. The joys of home ownership.
2. At least through the end of Feb I'm already overcommitted.
3. While I've done software for 20 years and done some fairly complex low-level coding in both C and C++, I've never ported an operating system.
4. The box I'd use for this effort isn't even plugged in yet ... see 1 above.
- For these reasons and others I'm sure I've missed, I haven't mentioned coding.
Oops!
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- I think software will be a real issue for this platform. It's one thing to hack up a bootable command line, it's another entirely to write suites of apps from PIM to wardriving, not to mention just getting X to run stably.
- I've been tossing about the idea of giving the OS a go myself, but therre are numerous impediments:
1. I just bought a house, and have a monstrous list of things to do for it. I probably have over 500 man-hours to do. The joys of home ownership.
2. At least through the end of Feb I'm already overcommitted.
3. While I've done software for 20 years and done some fairly complex low-level coding in both C and C++, I've never ported an operating system.
4. The box I'd use for this effort isn't even plugged in yet ... see 1 above.
- For these reasons and others I'm sure I've missed, I haven't mentioned coding.
Oops!
[div align=\"right\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div] (http://index.php?act=findpost&pid=148316\")
well the good news is there is not alot of stuff to port since most of it is pretty much standard. you can just take an existing rom like pdaxrom and do a few tweeks and add missing drivers and you are ready to go. we may have to roll a few custom apps for different things but that is not big deal.
the boot loader will have to be custom made if we want to add advanced features that the processor has such as signed kernels support based on a unique serial number for each processor. if some one steals your pda/phone you can have it password protected to the point that only the password will allow it to turn it on and no amount of hacking/flashing would be able to get around it(except replacing the BGA processor with a new one) unless the manufacture uses a master unlock(possibly unique to each pda's serial number).
manual on security features
[a href=\"http://www.freescale.com/files/32bit/doc/white_paper/IMX31SECURITYWP.pdf]http://www.freescale.com/files/32bit/doc/w...1SECURITYWP.pdf[/url]
i have not problem locking down a phone/pda i have like this so that if some F*** tard steals it that it is only a paper weight to them no matter what they do.(you can make this so that the only way around this is with the master password for the Secure JTAG Controller)
of couse these features can be used to DRM a system all to hell, but if we are running linux we got open source software for basically everything, so who cares if some idiot programmer decides to lock down his media player software (for example). and trust me there is nothing i enjoy more in this world then finding flaws in security systems. you batter be a damn good programmer cause if there is a will there is a way.
you can also roll another version without all the security features so that you have a completely open system. all you would do different if initially program the system with the unlocked version of the software.
with this processor you can lock down a system so much you make m$ proud(re: their paranoia with thier gaming system lines) or make it a hackers heaven, its all your choice.
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ive been lookinng at it and i was going to use uboot to boootstrap the kexec'ing linux kernel that then boots thhe kernel/OS of your choice. cuts down the dev time and pumps up the feature set and allows you to do the entire "signed kernel" and trusted boot thing (which i aam a fann off scince i have all the keys to my device just likee you will have the keys to yoour device
i will go on record as saying that i think trusted computing is a good idea, BUT i fear that its the implemntation we have to fear and how its used. i do not belive that microsoft will lock down the machines so that you cant instaall another OS as it would be suicide. think about it microsofts poligy about getting hit by a virus is a clean install of the OS. if you restricted the bootloader in that way then it would make it very hard to reinstall the OS OR microsooft would have to find a work around which could be uused to install linux aanyway
anyway back OT, the lockdown is actually on pourpse, if a comercial entity wants to produce a loked down version then fine with me, i gave them the ability to do so and if they want it modified then who better to ask than the community. then we get a cheap source of units
its most likly that we wont be able to flash these units however there may be a work around. and at any rate i wouldd state that the price of me helping them would be accsess to the keys (which i would keep in escrow for any user who wants me too) so that i could "reset" devices. this would mean that thier keys are not publically relased but we can get cheap uniits
tthe ide is that if you haave the unlock key then you have accsess to the internal (to the chip) lash that holds the keys, you then erase the Manufacturers key and reboot, leeaving an unlocked device which you canthenfollow the normall flashing procedure
and last of all, i have no problem with DRM, its the manufacturers giving you a locked bok and the keys to open the box and saying "only open the box to listen to the music". once ou have the keys there is nothing stopping you from doing what you want hence the aurgument that at a funemental level the concept of DRM is flawed
this explains microsofts trusted boot, they dont want data "leakege" to untrusted modules. good for them, i cant wait to see the day microsoft pulls off a 100% bulletproof solution (no saracsm here) and same goess for linux. not everything works as expected, make sure you plan around it
and while im at it i might mention that if i can i will try and make sure developers get free units, if i ma sponsered this will happen, if im not then patrtially subcidies will be more likly. ii have plans and everything is slowly falling into place
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- House ... interference ... bktzzkt ... Norwegian. Come March I'll have nothing but time, and debt. (owlish stare) More reading on this business then. I have to say I've never even looked at boot loader code, much less written one, but what the heck? There are certainly plenty of examples floating around.
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its funny i was looking into "bios" and what it means to people
basically on the x86 we call it a "bios" on everything else its "firmware". except on everything else its expected that the firmware is the final program that will be running and that it knows about the hardware
on the x86 however it also provides basic drivers and bootstrapping code to launch the next stage
so on this thing why not use linux as a bootloader to boot the next stage
nice and simple.
one of the funny things about the tpm is that its really designed to make up for the deficincies of a broken and untrusted OS. if the OS is in flash and its the only thing that boots then you dont need a tpm chip nearly as much.
from a security standpoint it does help and is a good idea however i have never understood why they dont use a sim crad instead as then you gain the benifit of it bieng removable and if the hardware needs to be upgraded your drm C$#@ dosent go out with it.
anyway back on topic (my mind drifts often) bootloader code isnt that hard at all, you just have to know the hardware and how to initilise it. (not always easy but not nearly as hard as one would think, the hard part is working inside of 1K of sram trying to start up the ram controller before you can bootstrap into that nice 32MB+ of ram in the system)
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Ok, I know we all read linuxdevices regularly, and there have been a number of almost-rans, but here's one that really does seem to fit the bill as being a suitable motherboard for the PP:
http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS5355237317.html (http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS5355237317.html)
# Processor -- Freescale i.MX31, clocked at 532 MHz
# Memory:
* 32, 64, or 128 MB SDRAM
* up to 8 MB NOR flash for bootloader
* 32 MB to 1 GB NAND flash
# Graphics:
* up to 1024 x 1024 at 16-bit color
* supports STN, color STN, and "all TFT" LCDs
* 3D accelerator, MPEG4 encoder, camera interface
# Other I/O ports:
* 10/100 Ethernet
* 3 USB 2.0 ports -- 1 high speed (480 Mb/s); 1 OTG high speed (480 Mb/s); 1 full speed (12 Mb/s)
* 5 serial ports -- up to 115 kbaud; two shared with camera and USB
* 10-bit A-to-D converter for touchscreen controller
* AC97 audio -- line in/out, mic out, headphone/speaker out
* 8 GPIO lines shared with peripheral functions
# Expansion:
* PCMCIA V2.1 card
* 4-bit MMC/SDIO card
# Dimensions -- 2.1 x 3.4 inches (54 x 86 mm)
# Power -- 3.3 VDC at 270 mA typical
although only one MMC/SDIO slot, it does have pcmcia interface, and if fitted with 1G of flash the SD slot wouldn't be needed all the time anyway!
price doesn't look too bad, even their eval kit is not outrageously priced; just need a nice display, case and battery
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i was waiting for someone to mention that
i thought it would be a great board to experimint with in the mean time, sort of a dev tool before the hardware came out
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here is the manufacture's web page for the board
http://www.garz-fricke.de/render.php?sess_pid=357 (http://www.garz-fricke.de/render.php?sess_pid=357)
the price is a good price and it looks like a good basic board to start developing with. how all we need now are some scematics to see how it is all put together.
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that in something the size of the koshinja (sp) with a full sized laptop battery (lose pocketability, gain full keyboard better screen and many hours uptime?), touch screen and connectivity would be pretty compelling, too
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my Deutsche is nich sehr gut but there's enough English terms to follow it... the 2nd page is mostly English.
http://www.garz-fricke.com/render.php?sess_pid=356 (http://www.garz-fricke.com/render.php?sess_pid=356)
the Adelaide has a starter kit based on the Europa system, just with upgraded system board I think... shame the 5.7" display is only VGA.
http://www.garz-fricke.com/render.php?sess_pid=303 (http://www.garz-fricke.com/render.php?sess_pid=303)
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- I like it, speculatrix! A little less memory than I prefer, but the dimensions are nice, and 1W sounds pretty low for power. Not I'm a guru at that or anything. It seems have enough I/O to be usable and it's small enough to made pocketable. It also may support the "many devices" idea ... make more than one case that this embeddable system plugs into. If someone wants a mini-laptop with longer battery life and a larger display they can have it. If someone wants pocket sized they can have it. Long as this doesn't hideously complicate drivers it should be doable, no?
- I particularly like how much it does out of the box...
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Another alternative...?
http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS4891477736.html (http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS4891477736.html)
"Unicon Systems has started shipping its Linux-powered development kit based on "chip-on-film" technology similar to that used in Motorola's ultra-thin "Razr" phones. The "MKit" design includes an application-ready Linux OS and tools, and targets consumer devices such as portable media players, PDAs, and UMPCs (ultra-mobile PCs)."
"...is based on a Samsung S3C240A processor, an SoC (system-on-chip) based on an ARM9 core clocked at 266MHz. The board has 32MB each of SDRAM and flash, expandable via an optional SD card slot."
"I/O includes:
* 2 x USB 2.0 high speed ports
* 1 x USB OTG
* 1 x host USB 2.0 full speed
* 1 x device USB 2.0 full speed
* 802.11b WiFi
* IrDA
* 2 x RS232
* I2C
* SDIO
* JTAG
* Stereo audio I/O
* 2D motion sensor"
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Another alternative...?
"...is based on a Samsung S3C240A processor, an SoC (system-on-chip) based on an ARM9 core clocked at 266MHz. The board has 32MB each of SDRAM and flash, expandable via an optional SD card slot."
the lack of RAM means it's no good, sorry. We can live without much/any flash if it can boot off SD or CF... but we need 128MB ram at the very minimum.
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ive been lookinng at it and i was going to use uboot to boootstrap the kexec'ing linux kernel that then boots thhe kernel/OS of your choice. cuts down the dev time and pumps up the feature set and allows you to do the entire "signed kernel" and trusted boot thing (which i aam a fann off scince i have all the keys to my device just likee you will have the keys to yoour device.
...[snip]...
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- I've finally gotten 'round to looking up uboot and kexec. So this thing would point to uboot in the "MBR" (or flash load addr equivalent), which would do all the setup work (including what a "bios" would do on a desktop), then it use kexec to load the kernel of chioce?
- I haven't gotten to the secure part of this yet, but I've only just started wading through uboot's documentation. I haven't found the docs for ARM yet, the ones I have are for PPC, but I'm sure a lot of the overall system is the same. (shrug) I'm not too worried about that at this early stage.
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actually its alot easier if you drop the confusing "bios" term
the bios is 2 things in one, its a libary of code thats platform specfic and its the initilisation routines for the hardware
the bios is a flash chip at a specified place in mem, normally this overlaps with the reset vectors so that when the chip boots up and exectues a reset as its first instruction it jumps to the code pointed to by the reset vector in flash.
then it boots the hradware (uboot) and performs the process of bootstrapping the system, once the system is booted it hangs around and provides a libary of code for people to develop with
embedde systems are the same except they cut the cruft out of the x86 bootloader and start up the ram controller, flash, copys the Os from flash to ram and exectues its leaving teh OS to bring everything up, this is unlike the bios that does all the nice booting stuff for you, which moderen OS's throw away after booting from the MBR and start again
nowdays i belive the bios functions are only good for the MBR, ane even then there are some projets looking at rethinking the entire boot process
your on the right track there with kexec, howevr the security features are just there to make sure that the kernel is the one you want to boot and not a 3rd party one. the security feahures do a check sum and/or dencryption from mem before booting and check itaganst built in prom to make sure its ok
once the kernel is loaded we can use hmacs or whatever to ensure its all good (signed cheksums) and encryption
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- Sorry for the term confusion. So this will put uboot at the CPU reset vector, which will make sure basic hardware is functional, then pass off to kexec to load the kernel of choice. Once that's done the kernel modules initialize the rest of the hardware. I'm intentionally not including where OS copies, etc are taking place. I presume once I learn enough about uboot and kexec things like this will be obvious.
- Having finally loaded a version of pdaXrom that's stable enough for my tastes (I knew they'd get that right eventually) I have to say it would be an excellent candidate for an operating system. I think it already uses uboot as well.
- The "spare" Linux boxen have taken a back seat since the move, so I don't have my development workstation set up yet. When I do I'm going to download Meanie's code for pdaXii13 Akita, since that's what I'm running on Hiro right now, and get that to build. I can play with uboot and kexec from there. Even if pdaXrom isn't using those tools, I should be able to vet the boot sequence to use them. It'll be a good learning experience.
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yes, I know you (da blitz) look at linux devices regularly, but not everyone does!
this board looks very interesting:
http://www.armkits.com/product/NK9315.asp (http://www.armkits.com/product/NK9315.asp)
* Dimensions: 140x200mm
* Processor: Cirrus Logic EP9315 based on 32-bit ARM920T core microcontrollers running at 200 MHz
* Power input: DC12.0V
* 32M NOR Flash Memory
* 64M Nand Flash Memory
* 64M 32bit SDRAM
* LCD Display and Touch-Screen interface
* Analog VGA connection
* Composite Video and S-Video Output Connectors
* IDE Interface
* CAN interface
* Three-port USB Host
* 20pin standard JTAG interface
* Real-Time Clock
* I2S Interface
* 8*8 Keyboard interface
* PS/2 Interface
* 5 UARTs. One is RS485, and the other four are RS232 (two are extended through one PC16C2550 chip using two 10pin connectors)
* 10/100Mbps Ethernet Interface
* CF card socket
* PCMCIA card socket
* System bus interface
it's ONLY weaknesses as far as I can see is a lack of RAM, if it had 256M RAM it'd be great and no SD card slot; it's also a bit big, and we could comfortably drop the IDE, PS/2, and PCMCIA slot to reduce its size. Hmm, it'd be nice if it had a sata port which could be brought externally for things!
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14x20 cm is kind of big for a handheld .... and also the price is kindof high (570 $).
Why are the developement boards so expensive ... it put you off developing unless you have investors ;-)
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yes, I know you (da blitz) look at linux devices regularly, but not everyone does!
this board looks very interesting:
http://www.armkits.com/product/NK9315.asp (http://www.armkits.com/product/NK9315.asp)
* Dimensions: 140x200mm
* Processor: Cirrus Logic EP9315 based on 32-bit ARM920T core microcontrollers running at 200 MHz
* Power input: DC12.0V
* 32M NOR Flash Memory
* 64M Nand Flash Memory
* 64M 32bit SDRAM
* LCD Display and Touch-Screen interface
* Analog VGA connection
* Composite Video and S-Video Output Connectors
* IDE Interface
* CAN interface
* Three-port USB Host
* 20pin standard JTAG interface
* Real-Time Clock
* I2S Interface
* 8*8 Keyboard interface
* PS/2 Interface
* 5 UARTs. One is RS485, and the other four are RS232 (two are extended through one PC16C2550 chip using two 10pin connectors)
* 10/100Mbps Ethernet Interface
* CF card socket
* PCMCIA card socket
* System bus interface
it's ONLY weaknesses as far as I can see is a lack of RAM, if it had 256M RAM it'd be great and no SD card slot; it's also a bit big, and we could comfortably drop the IDE, PS/2, and PCMCIA slot to reduce its size. Hmm, it'd be nice if it had a sata port which could be brought externally for things!
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glomation inc sells the same board for $100. But regardless of the price, I wouldn't use a cirrus cpu, since they suck. Every ep93xx cpu produced today fails to boot about 10% of the time...
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Some pictures of the glomation board: http://dominion.kabel.utwente.nl/koen/ep93xx/ (http://dominion.kabel.utwente.nl/koen/ep93xx/)
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The one I liked best so far was the Adelaide thing ... price was nice too 140 Euro is not too bad. I might byu one anyway and replace my web server (currently a via EPIA system) with one of those ;-)
Anyone ever had one to play with ?
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definattly food for thought
i did manage to finish one project (yeahhh!! a nice curses front end for generating ssl certs using openssl, no cryptic commands for me ) so this ones next on the list
just out of intrest koen how important is RAM to you, im thinking a cluster of arm compile machines would be nice
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glomation inc sells the same board for $100. But regardless of the price, I wouldn't use a cirrus cpu, since they suck. Every ep93xx cpu produced today fails to boot about 10% of the time...
[div align=\"right\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div] (http://index.php?act=findpost&pid=165794\")
top tip, thanks for that!
it seems to me that an N800 with big memory cards is still one of the most cost effective well featured arm development/test tools. it'd be nice if the schematics were published so it'd be more amenable to hardware hackery.
FX: google google.
[a href=\"http://www.internettablettalk.com/forums/showthread.php?p=65414]http://www.internettablettalk.com/forums/s...ead.php?p=65414[/url]
hmmm, someone grabbed the files before they disappeared, so I too now have a copy
sadly the image quality really sucks!
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The one I liked best so far was the Adelaide thing ... price was nice too 140 Euro is not too bad. I might byu one anyway and replace my web server (currently a via EPIA system) with one of those ;-)
Anyone ever had one to play with ?
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=165798\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]
thanks for reminding me of the Adelaide, they even do a complete module with touch screen based in it... although it's only VGA. it seems in the embedded market there's very few products which have more than even 32MB of RAM let alone 128 or 256, and most displays under 6" are just VGA. I am wondering whether any of the better high-res picture frames could be dismantled and used for the PP (although the lack of touch screen might be a problem, a touch pad or tiny trackball or joystick would solve the problem for me).
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very nice, just found this little device
http://www.usedhandhelds.com/usedhh_reviews_900c.asp (http://www.usedhandhelds.com/usedhh_reviews_900c.asp)
has built in video out, 64MB of ram. CF and PCMCIA and a 640x240 screen. driver support is avalible for all the hardware as well but the current linux port needs a kick start
best bit is they can be picked up very cheaply, average price is $100 USD
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It's 1/2 the size of my laptop ... and weights, alone, twice as much as my lether case containing: C1K, headphones, 2 CF memory cards, 3 SD memory cards, usb wifi, usb bluetooth, usb mem stick and 2 usb adapters (mini-a_2_a-socket and a-plug_2_mini- ...
yes I accidentally-on-pourpouse put it on the vegy ballance in the supermarket (440g .... 50 cents worth of pumpkins .... ahahahaha)
Anyway I still prefer the Adelaide thing better ....
Koen: you might be the one to ask ... have you ever tryed one of those Adelaide things ?
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so i would be assuming you have one then?
its an intresting device cant wait for it to arrive wont be replacing my Z but i do have somthirng in mind for it
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No I only have some Z's and some standad x86 hardware pc ....
I did look at the tech info on the link you gave us ... I I looked at the size and weight ... that's why I made the observations ;-)
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The adelaide looks like a nice board, but it will need a base board (€500). Another plus point is that linutronix is doing the kernel work.
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Ooooops ... there we go again with the price.
Whitout the baseboard is it any use ?
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Ooooops ... there we go again with the price.
Whitout the baseboard is it any use ?
[div align=\"right\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div] (http://index.php?act=findpost&pid=165946\")
Do you see usable connectors on [a href=\"http://www.garz-fricke.de/render.php?sess_pid=357]http://www.garz-fricke.de/render.php?sess_pid=357[/url] ?
You would need to find a way to connect all the ports to the connectors, which is what the baseboard does.
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I changed my mind ... I don't like Adelaide any more ...
640 Euro is too much for me :-(
I'll haveto keep my web server on the via EPIA :-(
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some more interesting linux embedded stuff:
http://www.simtec.co.uk/ (http://www.simtec.co.uk/)
interesting, but apparently unreliable with poor performance:
http://www.picotux.com/indexe.html (http://www.picotux.com/indexe.html)
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i have seen alot of nice atmel arm refrence platforms as of late, some are quite chepa. while not powerhouses i could see several usages for somthing the sive of an sd crad or two with neworking capabilities (ethernet enabled letterbox?)
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Another homebrew machine, this time a gaming handheld based on an ARM11 (going to be based on a TI OMAP3430 it seems), 800x480 touch screen: http://www.gp32x.com/board/index.php?showtopic=38155 (http://www.gp32x.com/board/index.php?showtopic=38155)
Good luck reading all 120 pages of that thread...
Stackable ARM11 dev platform aimed at hobbyists:
http://www.buglabs.net/products (http://www.buglabs.net/products)
These seem to be pics of platform:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pmtorrone/1121015041/ (http://www.flickr.com/photos/pmtorrone/1121015041/)
They're seeding beta units right now, release is supposed to be Q4 this year.
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hmm, I remember seeing the buglabs stuff a while ago, there's been a bit more skin on the bones since then! Looks promising.
I'm still hoping Da Blitz will at least come up with a nice clamshell case/keyboard into which we could shoehorn a basic motherboard & display.
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i do have some stuff but its rough, and not yet anywhere near for release
as for the case, its always been a major problem with this project, i have a design that i am very very happy with but getting it built is another story
btw i joind the arm-linux lists and it appears that there are a couple of iMX.3 boards out theer i have never heard of, when i get a chance i will look into it