Repurposing WinCE MIPS netbooks?

How did you find out it was a MIPS processor? There are reports of people running Linux and BSDs on the Loongson Dragon chips, but I can find nothing about these Anky-7802's.

Mel.

Time to take those Chinese lessons.

I can't find those specific things but it's more likely to be ARM926 based. There seem to be quite a few very cheap WinCE things around using 926's.

I wouldn't bother with them, due to the lack of information about them they may not have a Linux port and even if they do it won't be well maintained. Also if it is ARM 926 based that's two generations old now and you are better of waiting for a Cortex-A8 based design with an supported Linux port.

-p

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Paul Gotch
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ple

This particular one is MIPS, from looking at eBay auctions of the same thing. All of the really cheap ones are MIPS, because there are third party (presumably unlicensed) clone cores.

They do have a Linux port, these machines are sold in either configuration. It just happens that the cheapest flavor is the CE one, for some odd reason. I've seen the same machine on eBay with the MIPS Linux load but it's $180 to $250.

MIPS Linux has a *big* Chinese push. The Loongson chips (at least earlier iterations; I don't know about the multicore 3rd gen chips) were MIPS. You might recall reading in the news recently that the Chinese government is trying to wean its IT infrastructure off x86 (because Intel and AMD are US-controlled) and Microsoft, and into open- source home-controllable software running on entirely homegrown hardware that pays no royalties to the US. (Much of the early MIPS IP, up to everything in the R3000, is out of patent; I believe the R4000 is either fully out of patent or the last dregs are due for expiry in

2011-ish).

This is similar to the CBHD push, the difference being that several pundits say (and I agree) that, unlike CBHD (which will have primarily domestic media of little interest to the outside world), these cheap Chinese architectures have a real chance of success outside their home turf, particularly if the cloud computing fantasy becomes some kind of reality.

Anyway, regardless of how old or new or well supported these specific machines might be, as long as availability continues, a terminal program and ability to write my own fbdev or X apps on the thing would make it significantly useful.

Actually MIPS Technologies legitimised the Chinese effort by licensing ST (who actually make the chips) back in 2007. This year ICT licensed the MIPS32 and MIPS64 architectures from MIPS. I can't imagine that these deals don't come with some kind of royalty agreement.

The latest designs have hardware support for accelerating x86 emulation via QEMU. It remains to be seen how far Intel will let that go before they start getting sniffy.

-p

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Paul Gotch
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I had read that, but it doesn't quite gel with the explicit statement from all [Chinese] parties concerned that the goal is to stop paying royalties to the US. They said this, in those words. I would assume that China has a lot of smart VLSI guys who are experts in designing around patents where necessary...

What sanctions, exactly, would Intel ask the US government to apply? :)

ple

ng

The "Anky" is most probably the Anyka AK7802 CPU, an ARM926 variant. Not much information is available on that chip, however (I have one of these netbooks here) you can try to reverse engineer some stuff using HaRET

There are similar netbooks available using another ARM926 variant, the Jade Z228.

-- Michael

eople

hing

BIZARRE. They must sell the same form factor plastic with a different motherboard containing a MIPS core.

China is a member of the WTO and therefore has to abide by rules around IP. It's smart to license the patents now if they only run for a few years and entirely meshes with eventually not wanting to pay royalties.

China has been attempting to do the same thing (having a different standard with no royalties) with wireless standards hence TD-SCDMA. However there are also WCDMA and CDMA-2000 networks in China.

Being different is a double edged sword it means you don't have to pay royalties to anyone but it also limits your export market because no one else uses the standard you've developed.

Import ban, and it wouldn't be the US it would be WTO and all member countries where the patents exist. Obviously this doesn't hurt the sale in the domestic market. Similar things have already come close to happening with IP disputes between US companies. However Intel have their own troubles with the FTC at the moment...

-p

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Paul Gotch
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There are a large number of these things based on Ingenic Semiconductor chips. They have a MIPS32 chip running at between 240 and 360MHz which they brand "XBurst" architecture. This appears to be unrelated to the Godson/Longsoon chips.

However interestingly many of the later products by OEMs are using Marvell XScale (ARMv5TE) chips. This may be because the Marvell have a XScale based TD-SCDMA SoC which could be used to add mobile data capabilities to such things.

-p

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Paul Gotch
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