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OLinuXino, a serious Rasberry Pi competitor?

No, but keep in mind here that some Linux-capable CPUs these days are pretty fancy (caches, superscalar, etc.) and have CPU busses that are non-trivial to interface too -- it's a lot more complex than the old days of data, address, and a R/W strobe. Similarly, many CPU busses are fast enough that you might not get away with ribbon cables anymore unless you're running, e.g., every other wire as ground.

So just be careful to avoid those for your purposes. :-)

(In a modern PC, while things like PCI cards are memory-mapped, when someone writes a line of code as simple as *MyDeviceRegister =

0xdeadbeef, what actually happens is a very complex transaction between the CPU, its local bus, the north bridge, the PCI bus, and whatever chip is on the target PCI device.)
Reply to
Joel Koltner
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Reply to
hamilton

Chinese mediaplayer I have,

Sorry, but that is pure theory. In reality 99% of the PCs will happily deliver >1A through their USB port. Current regulation circuitry and controlling it adds extra costs and customers might think their PC is broken because the devices are not working or are not getting charged. Manufacturers want to avoid that extra hassle.

I just tested a USB port of my PC with a dummy load and it supplies over 1A without a device attached.

--
Failure does not prove something is impossible, failure simply
indicates you are not using the right tools...
nico@nctdevpuntnl (punt=.)
--------------------------------------------------------------
Reply to
Nico Coesel

Don't count on connecting a CPU bus. Those days are long gone. The speeds are too high. DDR and flash memory usually have dedicated busses. Even if you could craft something that resembles a memory bus there are many issues to work out. Especially if you would make the bus go over headers. Nowadays you'd use GPIO, I2C, SPI or USB.

--
Failure does not prove something is impossible, failure simply
indicates you are not using the right tools...
nico@nctdevpuntnl (punt=.)
--------------------------------------------------------------
Reply to
Nico Coesel

The only computers I've seen complaining about USB current consumption is Macs, both desktops and laptops, and running both OS X and Windows. You get this nice loop where the OS turns off the host port, pops up a warning dialog, automatically turns the host port back on, turns it back off again, pops up another dialog etc. I was still dismissing dialogs for almost a minute after yanking out the device.

-a

Reply to
Anders.Montonen

The Model A that is intended for classrooms does not have on-board Ethernet.

-a

Reply to
Anders.Montonen

Is this a hard spec or do they just say that to make it simple. I see a 3.3V regulator close to RP's power connector.

--
Failure does not prove something is impossible, failure simply
indicates you are not using the right tools...
nico@nctdevpuntnl (punt=.)
--------------------------------------------------------------
Reply to
Nico Coesel

What is intended and what will be bought for various curricula is different, as I have dealings with ICT/Computing teachers in UK most are actually interested in Model B not A, hard wired LAN is easier as lots of building have no wifi or wifi blackspots.

Anyway adding wifi may seem cheap until you lose opne or two a lesson and more bits to check in and out.

--
Paul Carpenter          | paul@pcserviceselectronics.co.uk
    PC Services
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Reply to
Paul

In last two years seen at least three Win PCs complain about it.

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Paul Carpenter          | paul@pcserviceselectronics.co.uk
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Reply to
Paul

Why do you think so? E.g. in a board based on AT91SAM9G45 (

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) you can easily connect DDR RAM to dedicated pins (DDR_A* DDR_D* etc.) and use separate EBI pins to connect FPGA.

We have created such prototype a few years ago (

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), but now it could be done much cheaper, and provide much better parameters.

The idea is to have a single hardware configuration, which may be configured to have an PC working with simple bus connected peripheral or with complex Bus Mastering DMA capable peripheral, or a peripheral connected via ISI, I2S, SPI or whatever else.

-- Regards, Wojtek

Reply to
wzab

Preliminary schematic of the iMX233-OLinuXino has been uploaded to GitHub.

This is very rough and will have lot of changes. These changes will possibly be uploaded on Monday.

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A new user group has been set up for this board at:

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This is one of two new Linux low cost boards, that will be produced by Olimex. First one has 64Mb of ram, second one will be the same CPU speed as RPi, and have 256Mb of ram.

====================== Question: Like the idea, some sort of raspberry pi. What kind of android version would be supported since it only contains 64mb ram ? incl. TV out ?

Answer: OLIMEX Ltd says: March 7, 2012 at 10:05 pm

sorry there are few projects in my mind ;) indeed 64MB memory is too low for Android, but there is another project with 256MB and different processor which is too early to announce now :) ======================

Cheers Don...

===================

--
Don McKenzie

Dontronics: http://www.dontronics-shop.com/

DuinoMite the PIC32 $35 Basic Computer-MicroController
http://www.dontronics-shop.com/the-maximite-computer.html
Just add a VGA monitor or TV, and PS2 Keyboard.
Arduino Shield, Programmed in Basic, or C.
Reply to
Don McKenzie

the core runs off that regulator, the USB socket and the expansion connectors have the input power directly connected. The ethernet and the onboard USB hub may need 5V.

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Reply to
Jasen Betts

No problem. A USB to ethernet converter works just as well. There is a big chance the onboard ethernet works through USB. Many SoCs don't provide a MAC because mobile devices don't need one.

--
Failure does not prove something is impossible, failure simply
indicates you are not using the right tools...
nico@nctdevpuntnl (punt=.)
--------------------------------------------------------------
Reply to
Nico Coesel

That device is relatively slow. IIRC about the same device is used on Conitec's Eva board.

--
Failure does not prove something is impossible, failure simply
indicates you are not using the right tools...
nico@nctdevpuntnl (punt=.)
--------------------------------------------------------------
Reply to
Nico Coesel

W dniu 09.03.2012 20:45, Joel Koltner pisze:

Well, I know it. In our team we've dealed with PCI and PCI-e from both sides - at PC level and at FPGA level.

However for didactic purposes it is good sometimes to let students to work with hardware, which is directly coupled to the CPU bus (like EBI in ARMs) before they start to deal with more complex buses like PCI.

--
Regards,
WZab
Reply to
wzab

100mA would never charge a phone. 3000mA is much better. AFAIK, they try to charge the phone at 1C.
Reply to
krw

It's only a couple of years since I did my CCNA at the local college as evening classes. Their solution was quite simple: each time you do an IT refresh keep back twenty or thirty old machines for the tinkering classes. If a clean OS install is needed the student does it themselves at the start of the class restoring from a Norton Ghost image on DVD. Any network infrastructure or servers needed for the class is similarly set up at the start of the class. This was for all the courses, not just Cisco.

That worked quite well for them, where each class was at least a couple of hours but I've imagine set up and tear down would take up too much time for schools where a lesson is only an hour or thereabouts.

--
Andrew Smallshaw
andrews@sdf.lonestar.org
Reply to
Andrew Smallshaw

Additional information -2012-03-10

We started the iMX233 project, the name is OLINUXINO as it will run Linux natively.

The goal is EUR 30 single board linux computer. This is complete open source, open hardware project which is to be hosted on GitHub .

The specs are:

- iMX233 454Mhz ARM9 processor

- 64MB of RAM

- 2 USB hosts

- 1 100MB Ethernet port

- composite Video 640×480 pixels, color, with PXP graphics accelerator for picture manipulations

- micro SD card for boot and disk storage

- headphones stereo DAC with 99dB SNR

- linear input stereo ADC with 85dB SNR

- UEXT connector

- 31 GPIOs for interfacing including UART,SPI,I2C,PWMs

Although this board will run Linux there is possibility DM-BASIC to be ported on it and pre-estimated this MCU should run about 1 Million Basic instructions per second, with 64MB RAM available for applications.

The very preliminary schematic is uploaded on GitHub, the goal is next week to have complete schematic and routed board and in 2 weeks prototypes for the developers.

Cheers Don...

============================

--
Don McKenzie

Dontronics: http://www.dontronics-shop.com/

DuinoMite the PIC32 $35 Basic Computer-MicroController
http://www.dontronics-shop.com/the-maximite-computer.html
Just add a VGA monitor or TV, and PS2 Keyboard.
Arduino Shield, Programmed in Basic, or C.
Reply to
Don McKenzie

On a sunny day (Fri, 09 Mar 2012 20:14:36 GMT) it happened snipped-for-privacy@puntnl.niks (Nico Coesel) wrote in :

Chinese mediaplayer I have,

Well, mine crapped out at a much lower current. It is just that ignoring specs that makes that strawberry pudding a request for disaster.

Reply to
Jan Panteltje

On a sunny day (Fri, 9 Mar 2012 21:33:04 +0000 (UTC)) it happened snipped-for-privacy@kapsi.spam.stop.fi.invalid wrote in :

Right, when I plugged the little Chinese mediaplayer into my PC, battery empty, I heard a ticking noise. It was coming from the player, charging, power disconnect, off, on (tick) charging, power disconnect, off, on (tick).... :-)

Reply to
Jan Panteltje

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