PCMCIA Computer Project Aims Even Higher (and Cheaper) Than Raspberry Pi 161
lkcl writes "An initiative by a Community Interest Company Rhombus Tech aims to provide Software (Libre) Developers with a PCMCIA-sized modular computer that could end up in mass-volume products. The reference design mass-volume pricing guide from the SoC manufacturer, for a device with similar capability to the Raspberry Pi, is around $15: 40% less than the $25 Raspberry Pi but for a device with an ARM Cortex A8 CPU 3x times faster than the 700mhz ARM11 used in the Raspberry Pi. GPL Kernel source code is available. A page for community ideas for motherboard designs has also been created. The overall goal is to bring more mass-volume products to market which Software (Libre) Developers have actually been involved in, reversing the trend of endemic GPL violations surrounding ARM-based mass-produced hardware. The Preorder pledge registration is now open (account creation required)." Of course, the Raspberry Pi is not only only much further along, but has recently announced an expansion module (the Gertboard).
Great (Score:5, Interesting)
I'll buy one of each.
Re:Great (Score:4, Informative)
good man! feel free to fill in the preorder form http://rhombus-tech.net/allwinner_a10/orders/ [rhombus-tech.net] i'm a bit reluctant to do it on your behalf [aitch tee tee pee slashdot dot org slash tilde hatta]
please do bear in mind that in the early stage we're *not* going to sell completely untested cards in mass-volume right away, that would be foolish. we're going to follow the process that Dr Schaller has been doing on the development of the GTA04 - http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/GTA04_revisions [openmoko.org] as have various other projects, OpenPandora included.
so, early alpha boards go out to people prepared to take a risk, but who have the money spare (under $100, gosh, wow, break the bank why not) to consider "what the heck, this is cool, let's support this initiative" but at the same time have some expertise in embedded GNU/Linux development, and they might actually get something that works perfectly first time, and they're the ones that got it, before anyone else.
beta boards go out to people who want something that, hardware-wise, is pretty much guaranteed to work 100%, but maybe the software's not all there, and they might have to (gosh) get involved and help write it.
stable boards go out to people who really would "just like something that works, thank you, where's the debian distro image, where's the instructions for putting everything onto an sdcard, heck, where can i buy a pre-loaded MicroSD card so i don't have to do that, even".
so it's a known trade-off: the principles of Software (Libre) Development as applied to hardware: release early, release often. exactly the sort of thing that you never normally see in the development of hardware products, and i think it's pretty damn cool to be able to witness and be part of something that *isn't* GPL-violating. at bloody last.
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good man! feel free to fill in the preorder form
How can I even consider buying the product if your "web site" (which is just a Wiki) doesn't offer specifications, interfaces, power needs, thermal considerations, mechanical drawings, software, and many other things that are required to seriously consider using your product? Have you passed FCC testing, for example? If not then you probably can't sell the thing to the public at large.
It may be that your company just wants to announce a product and have t
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tftp, thanks for the heads-up. insight: i'm using openscad and mm3d: solidworks had better have the source code available before i touch it. that may give you a clue :) i'm a software (libre) developer, so this initiative is targetted at software (libre) developers. hence the quite deliberate decision to use ikiwiki as an open web site. i did actually add a CSS file, that's quite... that's quite something, that is, in software (libre) terms :)
specs are on the page; interfaces are on the elinux.org wiki
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ephhh, you're right - i'm trying to figure out the best way to express it! there exist patches for forms (using YAML) in ikiwiki but the version that's on there is "stable", running multiple sites, so... i kinda settled for a manual form for now. if this went ballistic yeah i think i'd be in trouble, and would probably convert to a python wiki, which at least i can safely/happily program in.
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ok thanks, i finally got it, and added "max budget" field.
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allo mr hairyfeet - good question. much of the reasoning _is_ "for the hell of it", but it is definitely more than that. what i haven't mentioned is that my associates have contacts with very very large PRC manufacturers. we really really are in a position to go, stage by stage, from a prototyped system all the way to massive-scale production that would dwarf even Dell (because companies such as IBM and HP actually use one of the PRC manufacturers that we are in communication with). now this is *not* "b
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If you're going to right paragraphs of text it would help if you used conventional capitalization. I know it's common in the instant/text/tweet messaging world to forgo them, but they really help with readability in longer texts.
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I do check, and I missed it, and it was an honest mistake. That's a huge difference from intentionally not following the basic convention to start sentences with capitals.
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I don't understand, and I don't read long texts without capitalization. Your comments may not be "full articles", but they are long texts publicized for a wide audience.
I consider it rude to not follow basic conventions, as it places a burden on the reader and diminishes the value of conventions used in language.
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Yeah, I'm another who doesn't understand. How does your muscle memory work correctly? You need to keep two patterns now, one for shifting and one for not. My little finger works by itself at the beginning of a sentence; forcing it to not do that would require extra effort on my part.
But, perhaps you think that it's saving some energy on your part. If that is the case, I would counter with: forcing your readers to work harder just to save a little ATP does not seem to align with the goal of maximum effic
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thanks symbolset.
Exciting (Score:2, Interesting)
This is really exciting. Personally, I can't wait for the Raspberry Pi to start shipping and I will definitely get a few, but if Rhombus can pull this off, that will be fantastic, too!
Why PCMCIA? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Why PCMCIA? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Why PCMCIA? (Score:5, Informative)
PCMCIA was originally designed as a memory card form factor. It was later thickened up for use as an expansion card form factor.
Also I think being thicker would have doomed it sooner as laptops got thinner.
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PCMCIA has been obsolete for like 15 years replaced with identical form factor Cardbus cards. Not only that but Cardbus has been obsolete for 5 years replaced with Expresscard, which itself isn't that popular because most people use USB for add-on peripherals these days.
So really they are comparing it to an old obsolete format.
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PCMIA ? Didn't that die out with the passenger pigeon?
Re:Why PCMCIA? (Score:4, Informative)
hi pedrop,
yeah we thought about that, but ExpressCard means PCI-e. so we investigated how many SoC "embedded" CPUs have PCI-e and it's like about... 5. several from marvell, but they're the high-end "server" style ones, with power budgets wayyyy over the reasonable limit.
then we looked instead at PCI-e "PHY" chips. there's _one_: it's a PCI-e to USB converter, which says it all, really.
the other option is an FPGA: they're just... horrendously expensive. something like the Zynq-7030 would be able to do it in hardware using the on-board FPGA, but that's not out yet.
the only other option would be bit-banging! updating multiple GPIO pins to emulate a 33mhz ISA bus *shudder*. ... yeah overall we just went "ok, forget it - let's just take over PCMCIA at the connector/header/socket level".
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I'd guess it's for upgrading a laptop. PCMCIA would give the board a chunk in memory-map space, as well as being in a robust form-factor. USB dongles tend to end up having damaged connectors to the point they are unusable.
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First time was when I had an USB TV stick on a laptop. Lifted up the laptop and was about to sit on the sofa, when the cat decided it wanted that seat :) Laptop slipped backwards, and straight onto the USB TV stick - bent the connector off the circuit board.
Other time was USB headphone adapter stick that has a pair of standard audio connector headphones. Tripped over the cable and stretched the USB connector again.
Simple because the PCMCIA sockets are on the side and not back alleviates thes problems. For a
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I could ask the same about you and PCMCIA cards. I have had many, SCSI, NIC, modem, Wifi, and USB 2.0 and used them extensively and interchangably. I never managed to bend any pins.
Same thing with USB, though.
I blame poor tolerances in the computer's PCMCIA slot - too much clearance let the card shift enough that the pins didn't quite line up. This seemed to be a common problem back in PC cards were popular - we always ended up with a computer or two at the office with pins mangled so badly that we had to replace the PCMCIA slot module.
Apparently I'm not the only one to have this problem, since the howto guide on fixing the pins mentions the problem:
http://www.ehow.com/how_8690286_fix-bent-cardbus-pins.html [ehow.com]
However, the pins in the slot where the card connects can sometimes bend, making it impossible to insert the card into the slot. Forcing the card to insert will only make the problem worse and can bend other pins
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I blame poor tolerances in the computer's PCMCIA slot - too much clearance let the card shift enough that the pins didn't quite line up. This seemed to be a common problem back in PC cards were popular - we always ended up with a computer or two at the office with pins mangled so badly that we had to replace the PCMCIA slot module.
Apparently I'm not the only one to have this problem, since the howto guide on fixing the pins mentions the problem:
http://www.ehow.com/how_8690286_fix-bent-cardbus-pins.html [ehow.com]
hey guess what, dude? if you manage to mangle it irretrievably, then thanks to the modular design you've only got one part to replace, not the entire device, eh? is that good apples or what? :)
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if you manage to mangle it irretrievably, then thanks to the modular design you've only got one part to replace, not the entire device, eh? is that good apples or what? :)
Well, since the pins are on the motherboard side of the connection, the easy part is to simply open the laptop up, quickly desolder a 100-pin surface mounted connector with a hot air rework station [sra-solder.com], then take a new one out of your desk drawer, position to plus-minus 5 mil and solder all pins using infrared reflow. (You can't use the sol
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i'm the boss: i rebelled at the request [from myself] :)
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I think they're just using the physical PCMCIA connector, not the PCMCIA pin-out. I think it's so that the entire thing can be plugged in to a variety of hardware devices: small form-factor computers, TVs, tablets, whatever. There are benefits to that approach. Wouldn't it have been nice, for example, if you could have upgraded your original iPad by simply ejecting the motherboard and inserting a new one? There might not have been any reason to replace the screen and battery. This sort of modular appr
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I think they're just using the physical PCMCIA connector, not the PCMCIA pin-out. I think it's so that the entire thing can be plugged in to a variety of hardware devices: small form-factor computers, TVs, tablets, whatever. There are benefits to that approach. Wouldn't it have been nice, for example, if you could have upgraded your original iPad by simply ejecting the motherboard and inserting a new one? There might not have been any reason to replace the screen and battery. This sort of modular approach resolves that. And it opens up opportunities for hardware manufacturers if they know they can get a whole computer in a known form-factor. It would relieve them of an otherwise huge part of the product design.
exactly! now, why did you say this as an anonymous coward? :) the problem with the above is that what end-users would love is exactly what consumerism hates! planned obsolescence is what it's called, i believe. we don't like that sort of thing round here, y'all :) hence the initiative is being done under the umbrella of a Community Interest Company, because it removes the absolute requirement to maximise profits over-and-above-all-else [CICs just have to not make a loss, and there are *no* Shareholders
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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Hairy,
They are using the form factor of PCMCIA to use existing parts. They are going out of their way to make sure it can't plug into a laptop PCMCIA slot as the electrical pin-outs are no where near the same. They just want a cheap connector that is small but with lots of pins.
In the old days we made homebrew computers with DB25 connectors for I/O even though we were never going to use it for serial or Centronics printer connections. It's just a cheap connector available everywhere.
PS: I just used Ninit
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Sadly the corps have figured out "designed for the dump" gives them their biggest profits hence why everything is so flimsy and easily broken now. Personally I wish the FOSS guys all the luck in the world, i'd love a cell phone or laptop where parts were as easy to get and interchange as your average desktop but I doubt the corps would ever let that happen, it'd cost them too much profit.
we've spoken to several of them, already. the profit margins anticipated by the large companies are, exactly as you surmise, too low. thus, we have no competition. question for you: tell me where you can get a GPL-compliant 1ghz+ ARM Cortex laptop with 1gb or 2gb of RAM, anywhere in the shops with a 1280x800 LCD or better for $150 and i will quit working on this and go buy it.
ok, that's just one point covered - i've said quite enough on this discussion already, i'll leave it for a while, ok? :)
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CRFF? you mean CompactFlash? i'd not thought of that one - damn good idea. let me think... it would be ideal... except it's only 44 pins (it's IDE, basically - see hwtools.net they have converters). 44 pins is not enough. thinking about it, we miiight be able to get two CF slots side-by-side, but who's going to make a double-sized case? naah, 68 pins by a jammy coincidence is just enough, _and_ we can still use the 3.5mm stainless steel off-the-shelf cases. jammy, huh? :)
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Yeah, I'm sure "planned obsolescence" is the reason why you can't separate the screen from the mobo in the iPad, and not the fact that to make something modular and still sturdy, it would have to be much thicker and heaver, and not really be the same device at all..
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Having repaired a laptop several times, the screen is the most expensive part. A company called Nextronics used to do a "part-exchange" program. Exchange your old WUXGA screen with them and they'd give you a discount of $200 on the $800 - $1200 for a new screen. Looks like they've gone out of business in that market now.
Re:Why PCMCIA? (Score:4, Interesting)
http://rhombus-tech.net//faq/#index4h2 [rhombus-tech.net] - re-use of *existing* connectors, housings and assemblies keeps the price right down. yes you're absolutely right: expecting a complete new design of connector to be reasonably affordable is impossible.
the whole initiative is based around leap-frogging over the normal barriers to entry for products. use Software (Libre) Developers for the software engineering. use off-the-shelf parts as much as possible. do a deal with the factory ["we won't charge you for software engineer time if you won't charge us for hardware engineer time"]. use pre-existing casework designs from China-based Industrial Flea Markets (don't get the wrong idea, here - these Markets are the size of football pitches and 7 stories high!) and so on.
Re:Why PCMCIA? (Score:4, Informative)
re-use of *existing* connectors, housings and assemblies keeps the price right down
lkcl, before you jump into production please make sure that you don't want your SATA and USB work. Because they aren't very likely to; the PCMCIA connector is not a controlled impedance part, and your pinout requires 90 Ohm differential for USB and 100 Ohm differential for SATA. Ethernet is also 100 Ohm, but it has plenty of margin. Even if the board works on the bench, it's not the right thing to do. You need a proper differential connector, something that you can get from Samtec, for example.
I really don't know how much you are an expert in manufacturing, but I built a number of professional designs, and I strongly suggest that you don't pick an old, obsolete connector just because you think it is cool. You need to consider the other side of the connector. How many PCMCIA cages can you find at Digikey? How many of them are easy to solder by hand [digikey.com]? Hell, this connector would give *me* trouble, and I can solder 0402 all day long under the microscope. This connector has pin spacing of 0.635 mm, and practically none of your customers can solder it.
I still don't quite understand the business idea of your product. By "business" I don't mean making money; I mean "delivering value," making good things. What value do you expect to deliver if nobody can connect to your board? Your super-small form factor is a problem here. Very few electronic enthusiasts are so much concerned about size and space. They are far more concerned about being able to see the parts without using an electron microscope. If you'd ask me, I'd say you need to think how your customers are going to use your product.
The talk about standard connectors ... if you want it done right, use COM Express. These modules are interchangeable and your product would actually fit into an existing market. You can actually sell the thing without Slashdot. Inventing your own standard, using an obsolete connector and breaking the electrical signaling requirements will not do you any good. You are not large enough to establish a competing standard, and your design is not as good anyway. But if you don't want to deal with COM Express (which is not a pleasure to solder either, I admit) then just forget the unification and use plain vanilla 0.1" headers for everything except high speed interfaces. Or include a CardBus breakout board with your CPU board.
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http://www.usb.org/developers/usbfaq#sig6 [usb.org]
http://www.interfacebus.com/Design_Connector_Serial_ATA.html [interfacebus.com]
the other link i found, on fciconnect, the impedance stated "100ohm minimum".
so, thank you for pointing out that it's critical to find good connectors!
we didn't pick PCMCIA because "it's cool", we picked it because it's still a mass-volume part (Conditional Access Modules) but is legacy as far as portable computers are concerned. and because it's user-removable. and because, quite simply, there isn't anyth
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yes i looked at MiniPCI, i found _one_ image of a removable MiniPCI with ejector assembly: could i find who made it? could i hell.
JAE makes these connectors [jae-connectors.com]. I'm afraid you aren't trying hard enough. The job that you are about to undertake requires a lot of effort. You can't just take the path of least resistance.
COM express - saw that one. it's not user-removable - factory only.
I'm unsure what you mean by that. I have COM Express boards and connectors right here, and I assure you they are perfectly
No competition, yet (Score:5, Interesting)
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yaa, who said anything about competing? :) feel free to buy a 700mhz ARM11 unit for $25 when it's available. we're going in incremental stages. if you've seen what happened to projects like the OpenPandora, the OpenMoko and so on, you'll appreciate why. http://rhombus-tech.net//faq/#index2h2 [rhombus-tech.net]
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At that price I'm going to end up buying a bunch of each anyway!
Sort of a truism (Score:2)
This isn't a reason to not get a Raspberry Pi, but exciting nonetheless.
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Lotsa Talk (Score:2, Insightful)
There has been a lot of talk about these ultra low cost(and low power) computers recently. But, until something ships, meh.
Where is my Raspberry Pi?
Where is my Chumby NeTV?
So far, the only ones to ship have been the Plugcomputers and they haven't been cheap.
not a fair pricing comparison (Score:5, Informative)
"Mass-volume" pricing is manufacturer speak for wholesale prices, as in buying thousands of units at a time. You expect those prices to be half or less of retail. So a $15 OEM price will be about $30 at retail, generally speaking. That compares reasonably well to the $25 retail pricing of the Raspberry Pi, given that this new board has somewhat higher specs.
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"mass-volume" is code usually for 100k+ pricing. the pricing quote for the raspberry pi is equally based on mass-volume (100k) pricing. the pricing quote for the raspberry pi equally excludes profit, shipping, tax, packaging, delivery, handling, tax, customs duty, tax on customs duty, agent shipping handling fees, tax on agent shipping handling fees, customs duty on tax on agent shipping handling fees and so on. whilst that sounds like a joke it's not: each and every one of those costs _does_ actually ex
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I think you misunderstand the meaning of “not for profit”. It doesn't mean you can't make money, or turn a profit, it means that those profits must be reinvested in the activities of the company.
So of course a not for profit like like Raspberry Pi can have “room for expansion”, and while they cannot have investors who expect dividends or to get a share of the profit; they can have backers who will invest in the company in exchange for access to the IP, or for more favorable sales te
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jock, thanks for the clarification: i didn't explicitly mention it before, but it's worthwhile now, having made the mistake of not mentioning it earlier. the book that i read which describes the differences - patiently and in-depth - is Professor Yunus's book "Creating a World without Poverty". Professor Yunus is an Economics Professor, formed the Grameen Bank, pioneered "Micro Loans", and is the joint winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize. his book is just awe-inspiring, but crucially it describes why Lt
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nonono, nooo :) that's _just_ for the tiny micro-engineering-board which is an *extra* board! sorry if that wasn't clear on the elinux.org wiki page.
I'll wait until ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Until that time it's just vapourware - same goes for the Raspberry Pi, unless you want a keyboard sticker, they've got nothing on the market.
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pete: done. we have a deal :)
please feel free to fill in a preorder which says exactly this. you want "Stage: stable". if you think it would be better to have a stage "7 day delivery at the stated price" then please feel free to say so, but bear in mind that it may be better for you to wait until the product's in Hypermarket Retail Stores and you can buy them off-the-shelf (literally). of course, you miss out on all the fun that way... :)
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I have multiple small projects in mind for which this type of system on a card would
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michael, hang on dude! you're asking me to try to run before we walk, ok?
if you're not familiar with the way this stuff works... ok: the only thing we can do - *right now* - is set an "upper bound" based on known costs.
so *right now*, and *at this stage*, which is "alpha stage", we can say that, based on the fixed NREs of $USD 2,000, the more people that place preorder pledges, the more that we can subdivide those costs across the total number of people.
*right now* we have approximately 30 pre-order commit
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The point about delivery within 7 days is that implies the product is in stock, sitting on a shelf somewhere, ready to be picked, packed and shipped. I've done the early adopter thing (you can tell the pioneers by the arrows in their backs :)) and generally it doesn't work - you end up as a beta tester and spend too much time working around shortcomings and "version 1" bugs.
Likewise, I've bought promising sounding products, only to have them disappear (TINI, anyone?) when they should have taken the world b
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pete - i get it, i really do. the thing is, i've been waiting around for companies to stop doing GPL violations, and they're just not getting it. in this article, i haven't described how much of a god-awful mess the situation in china is (see the other article comments a few days back, link at top of page).
there are plenty of people left in the world who still find what you've done (and i too) really exciting. they _like_ getting their hands mucky :)
we'll get to where you want to be, i promise. i'm gonn
Computer on a PCMCIA card (Score:4, Insightful)
Great, so this low cost computer can be plugged into the PCMCIA slot of a laptop. Or you couyld just use the laptop. Am i missing something here?
Re:Computer on a PCMCIA card (Score:5, Informative)
These pinouts make no attempt to be electrically or electronically compatible with the legacy PCMCIA standard. 16 GPIO pins, 24-pin RGB/TTL, USB2, I2C, 10/100 Ethernet and SATA-II interfaces are included in the Version 1.0 specification.
Re:Computer on a PCMCIA card (Score:4, Informative)
Great, so this low cost computer can be plugged into the PCMCIA slot of a laptop.
ah NO! :) the mechanical design prevents insertion of EOMA-PCMCIA CPU cards into legacy PCMCIA slots:
http://elinux.org/Embedded_Open_Modular_Architecture/PCMCIA#Deliberate_Mechanical_Non-interoperability [elinux.org]
if you tried to force it in, you would mechanically damage the laptop and/or the card, and once you'd done that, the chances are that you'd blow up the card and/or the laptop as well.
Or you couyld just use the laptop. Am i missing something here?
you're missing something :) the design concept is that the EOMA-PCMCIA CPU card *is* the laptop... but only when the modular CPU card is plugged into an EOMA-PCMCIA-compliant laptop Motherboard that's *designed* to take these CPU cards. see example motherboards here: http://elinux.org/Embedded_Open_Modular_Architecture/PCMCIA#Example_Motherboards [elinux.org]
to have an x86 CPU in a laptop already (cost of $300+) and to then put in an extra low-cost CPU card that does pretty much the same job as far as 98% of computer users are concerned, well... that would just be silly. why not just have a modular mass-volume laptop plus CPU card that can retail for about $95, eh? :)
Re:Computer on a PCMCIA card (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps the project leaders should instead think before writing marketing copy.
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been doing that for 2 years, dude. consider yourself lucky that i'm a software (libre) developer, not a marketing droid. mwahahahah all your base are belong to us, we are Ltd Company pathological liars who will do annnnything to get your moneyyyy mwahahah. http://www.thecorporation.com/ [thecorporation.com]
Great for 3rd world countries, if they success (Score:2)
There isn't many detail now, even their website is just an wiki page. Nevertheless, I hold high hope for this one, living in a 3rd world country, I have always interested in fighting illiteracy and connecting people with the power of the internet. Of course there are many projects like that, both by the government and other organisations, but they aren't very successful. One of the reason for their failure, IMO, is that normal desktop PC requires proper maintenance, especially in remote areas where the weat
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yeahh i have a friend who went across the border into... i think it was the phillipines. there's something INSANE like a 140% tax on luxury goods. regarding the NGO efforts: you should read professor yunus's book "creating a world without poverty", he says that in comparison to CICs, NGOs have a disincentive to success. very very interesting book. thanks for the support, clarious.
computer in your wallet (Score:2)
Re:computer in your wallet (Score:4, Insightful)
You mean.. like a phone?
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ah, but then can you take the CPU out of the phone and put it into a low-cost beowulf supercomputer cluster? yes, seriously: one of the options that's possible with these little CPU cards, because they have SATA-II interfaces (proper ones) and also use such little power, is to plug them into a massive rack, 1gb RAM, 1ghz CPU speed, NEON instruction set per CPU, hell you'd have an ultra-low-power supercomputer in no time! if only bloody ARM would release information about how to use the GPU on the MALI 400
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Seriously. I don't think we're that far away from a 'phone' which gives you a touchscreen gui oriented towards phone/mobile use when unplugged but a desktop gui when plugged into a cradle with a monitor & keyboard attached.
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Probably more like connecting a wireless display and keyboard to turn a phone into a tablet, netbook or low-power laptop, depending on the situation.
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iPod touch? iPhone? Android phone or tablet?
Which of them fits in your wallet?
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Good step in the right direction (Score:4, Interesting)
I work in a company where some of our products are basically Full-HD TFT displays with integrated ARM-based computers (glorified nettop components) running a company-internal Linux distro.
Having one of these to replace/upgrade their computer like you'd switch the optical drive in a business laptop would certainly cut down costs.
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I work in a company where some of our products are basically Full-HD TFT displays with integrated ARM-based computers (glorified nettop components) running a company-internal Linux distro.
Having one of these to replace/upgrade their computer like you'd switch the optical drive in a business laptop would certainly cut down costs.
oo - lennier1, i want to talk to you :) i'd love to know how much these cost (the product your company has) because esp if it's gnu/linux based and has a decent amount of RAM i'm sure it would be desirable by many Software (Libre) Developers. please could you email me, to talk more? thanks!
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It's tied to a lot of paperwork for proprietary hardware but I'll see if I can establish any official contact.
These systems are used in a variety of ways, airport arrival/departure displays, conventions, concerts, in-store advertising (e.g. fashion shops book advertising slots in nearby stores), events, ...
Pricing depends on the size of the project/company. A supermarket in a shopping mall (1-5 displays plus license for the necessary application) is of course a different kind of project than, for example, a
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thanks lennier1. yes we have someone in the same line of business, he's looking at placing an order for 1k units, precisely because the cost of development of what is effectively the major bit of the work - the CPU card - is so much lower. then, they can do a 2 to 4 layer board for the remaining bit, covering all the peripherals. that way, they've just got themselves a decent profit-margin back, even on low-volume production runs of their product, because the main CPU card is a "consumer-grade" off-the-s
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What exactly does a company internal Linux distro mean, when you are selling the displays that are using the distro? I thought the point of GPL was that if you sold the hardware that used the software you also needed to provide the source for the software.
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It means the company chooses which packages make up the OS that's running on those devices, maintains its own forks where necessary, submits patches upstream and each shipment includes the sources which were used (minus the proprietary applications). Only way of avoiding something like the Gnome3/Unity clusterfuck on a deeper level.
What is this going to mean for me, the end-user? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not a programmer or a hardware hacker. I don't know anything about soldering circuit boards. I'm just a guy who likes to surf the net, write stories, play games, hang out on-line, and so on. What is the availability of this $15 device going to mean for me?
I mean, at least (as far as) I know the Raspberry Pi is going to be producing fully-realized devices that I can buy, plug in a keyboard and monitor and Ethernet cable, and I'm done. It sounds like this project is just about building a circuit board. And while it's nice it will be 40% cheaper and three times as fast, I'd like to know what I could do with it if someone came up to me on the street and handed me one.
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Modules like these will support and industry of mass produced low cost devices that will interoperate with them. You'll be able to plug the cpu module into your desktop unit or set-top-box at home and surf the net, write stories, play games, hang out on-line, and so on. You'll also be able to take the module out of your desktop unit or set-top-box and plug it into your laptop unit and surf the net, write stories, play games, hang out on-line, and so on.
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I'm not a programmer or a hardware hacker. I don't know anything about soldering circuit boards. I'm just a guy who likes to surf the net, write stories, play games, hang out on-line, and so on. What is the availability of this $15 device going to mean for me?
I mean, at least (as far as) I know the Raspberry Pi is going to be producing fully-realized devices that I can buy, plug in a keyboard and monitor and Ethernet cable, and I'm done. It sounds like this project is just about building a circuit board. And while it's nice it will be 40% cheaper and three times as fast, I'd like to know what I could do with it if someone came up to me on the street and handed me one.
if they _literally_ handed you one on the street, you'd be able to plug in a USB-OTG-powered hub, then you could put in a keyboard and a USB ethernet, and also an HDMI monitor, and some headphones.
if they also included the "micro-header" that is also a planned product, you'd also be able to plug in an ethernet cable (without the USB internet dongle), and you'd not have to plug in that USB-OTG hub, you'd be able to put a standard hub on instead, and also power it from a 5V PSU, and you'd also be able to conn
datasheet (Score:2)
lckl,
where is the datasheet of the processor?
I'm still waiting for my Open Pandora (Score:2)
I've got no idea how to design, market, distribute or support a product - which is why I don't attempt to do it. I fully intend to pick up a Raspberry Pi, and to be honest power isn't the reason. The reason I want it is because I believe it a) will appear and b) will be supported.
The secondary reason is that it looks (last time I looked) like it would become an XBMC reference platform - i.e. if I can't summon the intellectual ability to do something with it, I c
Re:Reptiles are among us! (Score:4, Funny)
As a member of the Illuminati, I can assure you that we have no reptilian DNA at all. You are confusing us with some of our experiments.
Please leave your Faraday cage, then we can reprogram you with correct ideas.
Re:Reptiles are among us! (Score:5, Funny)
Open platform (Score:4, Interesting)
However, it will not be anywhere near as cheap as $35, at least initially. First of all, it's not something just a couple of guys will do - one would need whole engineering teams to do various things
The above exercise would enable a company to produce a bunch of products that can be spec'ed @ difference performance points, and targeted towards various market segments - from home hobbyists and education going right up to smart phones and tablets.
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yes. now, what's really cool about the idea of doing an open hardware CPU is that when it succeeds, and when the rhombus-tech initiative succeeds, there will be a ton of compatible motherboards sold as mass-volume products that end-users, who don't want to go to the trouble of reinventing the laptop wheel or the tablet wheel can just go "yes! i'll have one of those, and now i have a laptop with an open hardware CPU" and even "yes! i have a smartphone with an open hardware CPU".
try that with anything othe
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If you want an open CPU, ARM is not it - the only one I can think of is OpenRISC.
There is also OpenSPARC...
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You single out Broadcom, but all the other SoC providers are just as "tight-fisted" as you call them. They all require a proprietary firmware and closed source drivers to work with their GPUs. The only companies that release the specs of their GPUs are Intel and AMD, and they don't make embedded stuff.
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There is a possibility that a design very similar to the BeagleBone will be spun with this new Embedded Open Modular Architecture/PCMCIA standard as well as other ARM soc designs. It will probably be at much lower cost than the BeagleBone $89 USD. http://beagleboard.org/bone [beagleboard.org]
This new standard allows you to plug in whatever cpu module you wish that is compliant.
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i think the difference is illustrated by the following: i actually did seriously evaluate getting a beagleboard into a low-cost laptop (15in, 1920x1080 LCD). it was impossible. we had to find a massive "gaming" laptop with a 1in case that would normally have a huge fan in it, to give the height clearance sufficient to fit the beagleboard, comfortably. in the end we gave up with that one.
but yes: bari (one of the subscribers to arm-netbooks) has volunteered to convert the beaglebone, or any other board wi
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I imagine the reason that they reused the PCMCIA design is for reuse of the tooling for the case and also the durability of the connectors. The PCMCIA connectors have durability ratings of 10K insertions. Many card edge connectors have only a durability of 100-200 insertions. The simply made fascia plate keeps these new cards from being inserted into legacy sockets. The cpu card might be swapped from a laptop to a desktop, set-top-box, car PC, cluster rack, etc etc. You could make devices with a simple cove
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I imagine the reason that they reused the PCMCIA design is for reuse of the tooling for the case and also the durability of the connectors. The PCMCIA connectors have durability ratings of 10K insertions. Many card edge connectors have only a durability of 100-200 insertions. The simply made fascia plate keeps these new cards from being inserted into legacy sockets. The cpu card might be swapped from a laptop to a desktop, set-top-box, car PC, cluster rack, etc etc. You could make devices with a simple cover plate to keep the cpu module from being easily ejected if you wish. Devices such as laptops, set-top-boxes, etc might be easily upgraded to a newer or more powerful cpu or more RAM by simply swapping the cpu module.
*snort*. i wish i'd written what you'd written, it's spot-on :) can i borrow what you wrote, put it (attributed) somewhere on the wiki? seriously :)
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ahh, you've dealt with SoC manufacturers rushing things out the door before, i see? :)
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It's hardly limited to those. Even stuff like Realtek's network card drivers provide the occasional WTF moment.
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The PCMCIA/CardBus connector alone will cost you [digikey.com] $9.29 + shipping from Digikey. However you can't just "wire it up" because its pins are too small and fragile. So you need to make a PCB for it, that can't be much more than $100 or $120. Of course once you put the rest of the breakout connectors onto that PCB it becomes around $150. At this point it becomes cheaper to buy a small netbook or a small Atom-based motherboard.
This whole idea seems to be tailored for people who want to build a computer. However