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I don't know just what google all did to linux to use it on android

An ancient list of kernel features unique to Android is here. Almost all of these have were ported to mainline kernel, so the difference between mainline and Android is very small. Android version 9 (Pie) is based on mainline kernel 4.14. Pretty soon, Android will simply be using mainline Linux, it is almost there now.

http://elinux.org/RPI-Wireless...

Pretty much only way to be sure.

Beyond that, you go with the same approach as when getting a PC to use with Linux - try to verify each individual component and whether it works or not.

https://davehakkens.nl/news/re...

dave hakkens is the person who really inspired the modular smartphone movement and brought it to prominence (buglabs was the first to really implement the concept, almost a decade ago). however we don't really have an actual explanation of what went wrong with project ara. here's some hints (search in this document for "ara" obviously): http://rhombus-tech.net/whitep...

basically it's down to the fact that google has more money than they have creative sense. they therefore tried to use "financial brute force" to solve problems. the summary is: with their financial resources they created a "backbone standard" called MIPI UniPro... forgetting that in the process it would be patented by the partners, thus AUTOMATICALLY locking out ANY kind of interoperability and competition for the next 20 years. how, exactly, is that supposed to be "open"???

if we want modular smartphones to be successful, we need PROPERLY OPEN STANDARDs that have no vendor lock-in, but that are also properly protected by a Certification Mark (the standards-equivalent of a Trademark) and a Foundation (or CIC or Benefit Corporation), which is given the financial clout by its sponsors to jump on anyone who wrongly implements the standard in such a way as to cause short-circuits (and end up killing someone due to lithium battery fires for example). it's not like a software standard, where interoperability failures cause a segfault: a HARDWARE fault can genuinely be dangerous.

also the standard needs to be made up of *other* standards that are unencumbered and royalty-free, so that companies and makers alike are incentivised to create modules (using 3D printers and low-cost off-the-shelf circuits), for example this one, under development: http://elinux.org/Embedded_Ope... . Google *literally* did the total opposite of this strategy in every single conceivable way. paying companies to develop new chipsets (patented, proprietary) and saying "here! it's open! sign our NDA, agree to our policy, and you'll be fiiiine!" i'm just staggered by the naivety of a billion-dollar company that had to add me to a special list "stop phoning this person to invite them to interview, you've called them five times already over the past 10 years".

the other thing is, whilst i am delighted at dave's success in bringing the benefits of modularity to a wider audience, he doesn't have any technical knowledge. he views an *increase* in the number of companies on the phonebloks.com front page as being a good thing. the key question which illustrates the point without having to spell it out: are any of the products listed on the phonebloks page interoperable in *any* way?

so. if there is anybody who would like to see this done properly - in an open fashion so that the mistakes of both google and fairphone are not repeated (see http://blogs.fsfe.org/pboddie/...) do reach out on the arm-netbook mailing list http://lists.phcomp.co.uk/mail... i've been investigating and researching this for years and waiting for the right opportunity. often it's good to wait for "big" corporations to fail to deliver, because it means that the hugely-public lessons sink in. a "small person" saying "this ain't gonna work no matter how much money they throw at it" tends not to be believed until the predicted failure comes about.

just as i did with the successfully-crowd-funded modular libre eco-laptop i've set up a stub page (for now) http://rhombus-tech.net/commun... which is a hybrid phone that acts "dumb" and may be upgraded to "smart" by plugging in a computer-on-a-module in Compact-Flash form-factor. "peripher

What you don't realize is that none of that means it won't happen, it just means Joe Average User won't end up buying it.

There is lots of open, modular electronics already. Your boogeyman didn't pop out.

sorry, i don't understand. could you possibly expand on this, perhaps help review the logic analysis behind the modular standards that i've reviewed over the past five years, if you feel that i've missed any or missed anything, please do let me know. the list that i maintain, including comprehensive analysis, is here: http://elinux.org/Embedded_Ope...

the issues to take into account are: it must be absolutely simple, it must absolutely work, and it must not break (due to mechanical or EMI issues). we just saw a report only last month a journalist (who was happy to say that he has "big fat fingers") trying to assemble and upgrade a Gaming PC - he just couldn't cope. and that's a "modular" design, isn't it? exposed electronics, fiddly parts - all modular mind you! - he was absolutely shit-scared of dropping screws and shorting out $1000+ worth of parts.

by total contrast, robust memory-card-form-factor casework is simple, works, and is protected mechanically and is EMI (static) shielded. if however you know of any other modular industry standards that fit these criteria, please do tell me because i will need to evaluate them and adapt accordingly.

Me too me thinks.

Bookmark these after reading the previous Dell certificate discussion earlier today.

https://www.thinkpenguin.com/

https://www.crowdsupply.com/search?q=librem

http://elinux.org/Embedded_Open_Modular_Architecture/EOMA-68

Besides devKitARM, there is the collection of toolchains mentioned here. I am getting most of my clues from the Emcraft toolchain, which is the only one for the SmartFusion. And we're great friends with Emcraft, but I want something a bit newer and a different build-tree style.

My last approach to the libstdc++ mailing list, here, was left unanswered. I figured out the problem behind that one, but it would have been nice to get some advice.

Autoconf doesn't have a --synclines flag, but I might be able to pass it in the M4 environment variable. I'll give it a try.

It is allowed to use kernel header files in user space, in order for user-space programs to interact with the kernel via ordinary system calls. This is allowed without the result that the user-space program becomes a derivative work of the kernel and therefore subject to GPL.

In general, use of header files do not create derivative works, although there can be exceptions. There used to be a lot of attention paid to the amount of code (e.g. number of lines) included from a header file, but no one seems to care about that these days, and this is almost never a problem. Richard Stallman has stated that use of header files for data structures, constant definitions, and enumerations (and even small inlines) does not create a derivative work.

http://elinux.org/Legal_Issues...

Use a Pi. For the same price you can have four and construct a video wall.

+1

That's exactly what I thought also some time ago and was surprised when I searched "Raspberry Pi signage" and found this site RPi Projects/Digital Signage.

Having seen how clumsy Cisco Digital Signage solution (DMM and DMP's are) is in practice it's not even funny. I'm not a great fan of it after 2+ years experience. We'll at least evaluate all that stuff available there before putting any more money on that Cisco soultion. (I am quite happy with many many enterprise class devices and solutions they have sold and I used over the 25 years, but this product is way under the usual Cisco standard, even with more recent DMP's).

How is 96board's "standard" any different to an ATX motherboard?

The upgrade problem you mention is there. I had to buy a new DVD-RW drive when I upgraded my motherboard/cpu/ram because the new motherboard didn't have an IDE controller. The new drive is the same speed as the old one, it just has a SATA port on it.

It's not just computers either. I have a media player connected to my CRT TV. It has no HDMI connections. I'm severely restricted in upgrading the media player because most of the new ones are HDMI only. The ones with component video cost more - which means I may as well upgrade the TV to a new one with built in DLNA - but then I lose the old TV's feature of "kids can't smash the screen because it's two inch thick glass".

A swappable CPU module like EOMA68 isn't really any different from a swappable CPU in a PC. When a new CPU comes out, the socket changes because the old one doesn't support the new features, rendering the motherboard useless.

Where are the PCIe lanes on EOMA68? Where are the multiple video interfaces? What about CSI for a camera? What about SATA?

You complain about the 1.8V GPIO, yet say it's all about cost here. New chips run on lower voltages. Adding level converters increases cost.

i'm the author of the EOMA standards, including EOMA68, so i have spent something like two years developing and refining hardware standards that will not confuse end-users. http://elinux.org/Embedded_Ope...

the 1.0 (i.e. final and absolute unchangeable) version of the 96boards "consumer" standard from 96boards will be going on the list of alternative standards, as, sadly, another example of a standard that will result in end-user confusion, annoyance, product returns and, ultimately, failure.

the reason is incredibly simple: an end-user standard MUST NOT have optional interfaces. i do not understand why people developing standards do not understand this. page 7 of the 27 page v1.0 specification states, clearly, "1 OR 2 MIPI CSI-2 ports MAY be provided on the expansion bus interface" and "From 1-2 lanes MAY be implemented on the CSI1 port interface". now whilst the latter is absolutely fine (because negotiation takes place at the hardware-level, so either host or client will correctly negotiate 1 or 2 lanes), the former most definitely is NOT.

let's think it through. here's a simple scenario. an end-user buys a 2-lane box, and a lot of expensive camera equipment. they then find that the box is too slow, and need to upgrade. so they go out and buy another box, and, BY MISTAKE, when they get it home, they discover that they only bought a 1-lane box. as there is NOTHING WRONG with it, they may NOT return it as faulty under warranty.

additional confusion results from page 8, over the options that the 3rd USB port MAY be a USB-OTG port. again, people will buy a system and a set of peripherals, relying on the USB-OTG capabilities... and then upgrade at a later date and make the mistake of not knowing what the hell is going on until it's too late. they investigate further and find "whoops, i bought the wrong system: this one doesn't have USB-OTG power damnit".

DC power requirements, page 8: again, more confusion when upgrading.

2nd (optional) UART, page 9: more confusion results.

a summary is given on page 12, where the moment you see the word "optional", count them. that becomes a permutation of the number of possible things that an end-user has to check when first selecting and then double-checking on upgrading the device. i count (if you include the USB confusion and the power options) at least *SEVEN* possible "options", giving... someone else can do the math here, it's what... over a hundred different permutations at least.

and then, when you get to the end of page 12 only then do you discover that the expansion board connections may be used as GPIO!

*sigh* i have to say that this really does not look like a very well-thought-out standard, at all.

Good catch! OLPC lost a lot of developer mindshare IMHO when they started cosying up to Microsoft and changing their hardware to run Windows. Example:
http://www.olpcnews.com/softwa...
"For me, that paragraph represents the end of a dream. I say that XP on the XO is the end of One Laptop Per Child as an educational project. With a Microsoft operating system, an XO becomes a "$200 laptop", a cheap Toshiba replacement, not an educational learning tool for children. With the Sugar User Interface, OLPC can claim to have a Constructionist learning methodology, it can claim to be promoting exploration and learning, it can even hope to activate the view source key. But once you put on XP, no matter how much it may be customized to leverage the XO hardware, children will not be taught to "learn learning" as Negroponte promised. They will be taught "ICT skills", a phrase Negroponte himself railed against. Ministries of Education will be tempted to lock down XO's in computer labs and revert the whole one laptop per child idea back to one to many, effectively negating the goal of this grand dream. Yes, for me XP on the XO is the end of OLPC, no matter who is the CEO."

Hope Raspberry Pi does not suffer the same fate -- especially as I recently bought two B+ versions, :-) not knowing about either of these forthcoming changes (better hardware or Windows).

The last week or so, I've been watching for the new Beagleboard-X15, which is both open source hardware (Raspberry Pi design is not quite open hardware it seems) and will answer a lot of performance and memory issues at least compared to the Raspberry Pi B+ or the Beaglebone Black.
http://elinux.org/Beagleboard:...
http://beagleboard.org/project...
"The BeagleBoard-X15 is the newest member of the BeagleBoard family. Measuring 4" x 4.2", it is based on a Dual Core A15 processor running at 1.5GHZ and features 2GB of DDR3L Memory. It is in the beta phase. ... Guidance is that it is certainly over $100 ..."

So, that board is a lot pricier than this newer (or older) Raspberry Pi though. Not too much for a typical home office server use as an example (like to run NodeJS locally for testing on a separate non-VM box), but still 3X to 4X more for the board. However, when you add a case, extra media like a hard disk or big USB flash drive, and a power supply, and a wireless dongle, and so on, I doubt the overall cost is probably that much more than 2X for an entire system with the Beagleboard-X15.

While the Pi is good for most of its intended tasks, it is lacking in many areas. The Beaglebone is a good upgrade but it too has shortcomings. But if you need more power, the Beagle team has another board in the pipeline.

If you want some serious power for an embedded project look no further than the Beagleboard X15. This thing is going to be a beast:
Dual core A15 ARM @ 1.5GHz
2GB DDR3L RAM
Dual core GPU (unfortunately PowerVR SGX, not open source friendly)
2D accelerator and Video accelerator
Dual C66x DSP processors
Dual Cortex M4 Image processors (only one is user programmable)
Dual PRU-ICSS ( programmable cpu accelerator to offload ethernet packet processing for industrial protocols like Ethercat, Profinet, etc.)
eSATA
USB 2.0 and 3.0
Dual PCIe ports, Gen 2, one x1 and one x2 (Yes they will be routed to ports)
Appears to have some type of video in, probably a camera port.
And more...

Rumored to cost about $150. Yes it costs much more than the Pi but you get what you pay for; a boat load of processing power and memory.

I use mine for video playing primarily. It makes a surprisingly good low-power HD media center to hook to, say, a digital home theater projector, so long as your gear is all HDMI enabled and your video is all h264. Its really shit for anything that needs more bandwidth than a USB bus though; because that's all it has; a USB bus. Even a PC from 1998 can easily blow the doors off it for general I/O throughput to disk and ethernet due to this somewhat unfortunate limitation. If all the on-board parts were interconnected with a PCI bus it would actually be a really great little machine for general purposes.

The *primary* problem with it though is that the closed-source binary components and the Linux kernel customizations are done incredibly sloppily and there is just about zero sense of transparency or trustworthyness in that part of the development process. There are *frequent* regressions in core functionality of these components, especially with regards to the HDMI capabilities and some of the cooler features such as CMA which hasn't actually worked as far as I can tell since late 2012, but I couldn't find anyone else, officially affiliated with the project or otherwise, to admit to having ever tested it. So that's what I'd fix first; OPEN SOURCE ALL OF IT.

Oh, and the Raspbian support community is full of pretentious asshats.

Take a look at the sigrok project. We have rather a lot of experience with low cost lab gear.

For a long time the best option for a standalone scope has been the Das Oszi scopes, sold under the brand names Hantek, Protek and Voltcraft. As a bonus, a guy name tinhead has reverse engineered the schematics. Hopefully we'll have it supported in sigrok very soon.

There's also the SmartScope for ~$180.

This link pretty much wraps it up:

http://elinux.org/RPi_Low-leve...

What would be interesting would be to bring the spirit of these old systems into the modern age rather than just replicate them wholesale. Boot into a system which allows you immediate programming (preferably with a modern OO syntax) and access to video, sound and peripherals. If there's anything that has suffered over the past three decades, it's easy access to I/O.

hmmm, if only there was something like that already under our noses.

I actually could mod you down, but I'm posting this because there is some confusion that you are having and I would rather inform than just smite.

The word that you're missing is "bootloader". When you apply power to the pi, the boot process starts by the GPU running some closed source binary blob which eventually get around to doing things like turning on the CPU and letting you run your OS.

Yes, you actually do have to use the closed-source video even if you use ssh or run completely headless.

I'm not saying that you should never use a pi, you just should be aware of what it is and what it is not, and it is not completely open.

1) If you're having your backups that close why not just put another drive in your computer and sync to that?
2) Buffalo NAS
3) Apple Airport Time Capsule
4) If you want a cheap hackable solution: Raspberry Pi NAS
5) Any other NAS

Probably the challenging bit is how you will sync to the storage. Here are some options for that:
1) Rsync
2) "Owncloud
3) Unison

You'll probably need to wrap a bit of scripting around it.

The ethernet on the Raspberry Pi is provided via a USB-to-ethernet chip.[1] USB devices on the Raspberry Pi have been known to give all sorts of problems when there is insufficient power,[2] which was likely to happen if one powered it using a standard compliant hub which only provided 500 mA instead of the requisite 700 mA. Since the network connection was provided via USB, it was also affected.

Citations:
[1] http://www.raspberrypi.org/faqs#Why no Gigabit Ethernet?
[2] http://elinux.org/RPi_Hardware#Power_Supply_Problems

Or something standalone.

http://elinux.org/RPi_CANBus

Simple logic, perhaps more difficult to implement.

If Engine_Started > 1000 and speed > 150 miles/hour:
                                Disable Brakes()
                                Increase Speed()

It exposes most of the features of the SoC (currently Allwinner A10/A20) which will allow a developer to use it for a multitude of purposes without having to design, prototype and build a board for their specific purpose. It re-purposes the PCMCIA interface and form-factor which will reduce costs. http://linux.slashdot.org/story/11/12/17/1429221/pcmcia-computer-project-aims-even-higher-and-cheaper-than-raspberry-pi http://elinux.org/Embedded_Open_Modular_Architecture/EOMA-68

Someone already tried to do this with EOMA-68. How successful it will be remains to be seen.

Ah, I remember them now. "Mini ARM computer reusing PCMCIA connector" would have sufficed to describe it.

:) Mini ARM computer, Mini x86 computer (when we get access to ValleyView), Mini MIPS computer (Ingenic jz series), Mini {insert CPU model here} computer, mini FPGA card, mini pass-through card.

the EOMA-68 standard is *not* limited to a particular CPU - it's not even in fact limited to a CPU *at all*. take a look at this for example:
http://elinux.org/Embedded_Open_Modular_Architecture/EOMA-68/Passthrough

that's what we call a "pass-through" card. it has HDMI/DVI **INPUT**. not HDMI output from a processor. it has HDMI *IN*. that input gets converted to RGB/TTL and is "passed through" to the EOMA-68 connector.

what's the purpose of that?

well, imagine that you buy an EOMA-68-compliant LCD Monitor. it comes with a "pass through" card. it costs the same as a standard LCD monitor. it has an HDMI input. except this monitor, you can press a button on the side, pop out the pass-through card, and insert an EOMA-68 Computer Card.

voila - the monitor has instantly been transformed into an all-in-one computer!!!

how absolutely cool is that?

you could turn it into a TV by popping out the Computer Card and putting in a TV card.

you could take that same TV Card and pop it into your 7in tablet "chassis" and you have a portable TV!

are you starting to appreciate just quite how powerful this concept really is?

It's hidden behind the fourth link. http://elinux.org/Embedded_Open_Modular_Architecture/EOMA-68

It's a computer in the form factor of a PCMCIA card. The whole goal of the project is to have upgradable tablets and laptops. You just pop the old card out, and put a new one in.

It's a laudable goal, but more hardware manufacturers would need to support it. Honestly, at some point they need to come out with a high performance x86 one.

They don't have a store, you can buy it from farnell, CPC(who are farnell but friendlier), RS, Allied electronics(whoever they are), NewIT(who i got mine from) and Maplin

If there isn't a single option there that offers it for less that 70 EUR with tax and shipping, i'll be a little surprised.
Charging 13 EUR for a pre-loaded SD card doesn't seem that awful, especially considering that they(the foundation, who aren't the ones selling the cards) provide you with all the tools and instructions to make your own bootable SD cards, no one's forcing you to do anything here.

Keep the fingers crossed for EOMA68 (plus whatever boards you like): seems like an all-open hardware and software stack.

Even though he is a self-starter ...

Okay, awesome! What you should do is get him a raspberry pi then pick up an HDMI cable, a cheap keyboard and cheap mouse (both of which should be wired as it lags to offload wireless processing to the pi) from monoprice. Right now, B&H Video has a deal where you get 2 x 16GB cards for $15 if you add two of these to your cart with free shipping. Okay, I've actually already bought several sets of this stuff from these exact same suppliers and handed them off to a bunch of kids that are loving them right now. So that's all legit. You'll need to have a TV or monitor with an HDMI in and it helps if you have a cheap webcam (one of the tutorials I'm gonna mention uses it). You'll also need a second computer with a way to access SD flash cards (pick up a USB toaster for $5 if you don't have this)> Optional would be male-to-female wires like these with any breadboard so he can tinker with making his own stuff -- you'll probably have to drop more cash on more electronic devices to interface with it if you go this route though.

Next, you might consider this book but I prefer this one more. Okay then you send your kid here to get the hard float raspbian wheezy and you tell him how to figure out how to get it on the flash card to boot on the pi. There's a wiki for all this stuff. Then you send him here and make him do these tutorials. Then you make him read all the issues of the MagPi. And if he's smart enough, you buy him some more peripherals. There should be a lot more tutorials coming out for this device.

Once he has all that stuff, you go to the liquor store. Now, the liquor stores around my house sell a lot of types of vodkas and Absolut is great but I've found that Sobieski satiates me just as well. It's made from this Dankowski rye that makes great gimlets. Try to buy a case of handles and haggle him down to ~$13 a handle (that stuff is really cheap). Then you go to the store and you get some of that Real Lime lime juice. Not the key lime shit, the actual lime juice. You're gonna need a decent blender because this thing is gonna be working all summer long. Also, a bag of hazelnuts. Go home and fill a cup to the top with ice and put in about one finger of lime juice. Fill the rest with Sobieski. Blend that shit up, garnish with a couple crushed hazelnuts to really dry that shit out and kick back. Trust me, your kid is going to come and talk to you about python and apt-get and registers and you are not going to want to have to deal with that. So just get good and fucking faced in the sun all summer long. Your kid will thank you for staying out of his hair. A summer of riproarin' fall down drunk? You can thank me later.

Datasheet: http://www.raspberrypi.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/BCM2835-ARM-Peripherals.pdf

More: http://elinux.org/RPi_Documentation

You didn't try very hard, did you? The datasheet has been available for almost a year.

Is there a decent WiFi adapter for this thing?

There is a list here

Keep an eye on EOMA68 cards. Sometime in the future, the IO may be made extremely easy

One of the many RasPi Expansion Boards - once I relearned the basics of programming with the help of my Pi, I'm getting at least one of those beauties.

In a couple years, when I get tired of whatever low-end SoC they can get in their $100 tablet, there'll be a couple new generation of SoCs, and either a low-end from the newest generation or a mid-range from the older generation will easily double the performance for the same price.

If the tablet uses EOMA-68 CPU cards, I'll just be able to buy a new CPU card and upgrade the tablet. And then I can put the old CPU card in something else (maybe a plugserver or such). If not, I'll have to buy a whole new tablet, and in that case, why wouldn't I just spend $200 no on one that's twice as fast?

EOMA-68 or go home.

The Raspberry Pi has at least 17 pins available for I/O and the Rev 2 boards have 4 additional I/O pins.

For reference:
http://elinux.org/RPi_Low-level_peripherals#GPIO_hardware_hacking

I would check out the RPi forums and potentially the wiki. There are a lot of folks who use the RPi for robotics.

Here is a link to the sub forum that includes robotics, but I bet there are robotics threads in lots of other places on their forums as well:

http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewforum.php?f=37

And here is the RPi wiki:
http://elinux.org/RPi_Hub

Feel free to ask on the forums, I have found them to be very friendly.

Well, I don't know much about what an average Bangladeshi village has on hand but I'm going to wager that it's a very wide spectrum. So my personal advice is no matter what you find to be your solution, you should provide the DIY equivalent any DIY-able components of the pieces. In this way you can treat yourself as a one man thinktank and you can publish this stuff under CCBY3.0 and your project may enjoy self sufficiency without requiring your constant attention.

So to start at the core of it, I would personally select a $25 non-ethernet (Type A?) Raspberry Pi, an $8 USB keyboard and $5 flash card. From there those little devices have the RCA Video (analog) out and also an HDMI out. So if one of your computers goes bad, you can always rig it up to one of these little guys. However, I also understand that you need more displays. Now this is where you have the option to become a rockstar superman. If you are not afraid of code and working GPIO pins I would suggest purchasing some of these little guys first getting it to simply display and read across what they are typing and secondly maybe use one row to take in a file that progresses in typing difficult and displays that on the first line while it waits for input and validates on the second line (might even have room to use LEDs or something else on the RPi for score keeper/carrot/stick. If you document all this, it might turn out that the villagers get wise on how to ripe a seven segment display out of anything and hook it up to these GPIO pins?

So how to power this? Well the easy way would be to use what you have already available for power but get some of these guys and daisy chain these guys from one of your existing computers until they don't produce enough power. I would suggest researching that screen and the Pi and figuring out what their power draw is. Maybe get some cheap fuses to protect your hardware. A lot of broken appliances still have good electric motors in them and electric motors often produce energy as turbines if you spin them. Now, the big problem is how do you clean the power if people are cranking these turbines with their hands or connected to a bike's gear set? That's something I'm not much of an expert in. I do know the Pis run off of two rechargeable AA batteries just great but you also have to take care if they're planning to try to charge those batteries with a hand cranked appliance motor. From my understanding it's pretty tough to not screw stuff up if you're dealing with human generated power. Had to keep that steady and to find existing ways to clean it down to what tiny sensitive devices need.

The upswing of all this would be that the RPis are versatile, any of those students could really do a whole bunch of things with these. And if you make this a part of the Raspberry Pi wiki, you might get people helping you with those screens -- might. At least others will be able to use your work.

ah. no. this page explains the different approaches. it's definitely *not* a factory-installable module. the key is in giving the *users* the freedom to safely upgrade their own computing appliances at will. none of those computer-on-module factory-installable modules can be said to achieve that goal. imagine your grandma trying to insert an SO-DIMM form-factor computer-on-module after keeping it her handbag, wrapped in her best polyester scarf for a week. what do you think the chances of success are? by contrast: now take the standard PCMCIA form-factor. chances of success just went up by an infinite percentage, didn't they?

http://elinux.org/Embedded_Open_Modular_Architecture

Gigabit Ethernet goes through 10 to 100 to 1000.

Does the Allwinner A10 support Gigabit Ethernet? Or is it the EOMA-68 that allows for future boards with GbE?

the latter.
http://elinux.org/Embedded_Open_Modular_Architecture/EOMA-68#Table_of_EOMA-68_pinouts
http://git.rhombus-tech.net/?p=eoma.git;a=blob;f=pcb/allwinner_a10/library/allwinner.lib;h=cd435ae32f3049d7b6dcb524af0fcc6ec1a6b77d;hb=dfaa27a0ec6db9eaaa8abc74c68849caa64b721b#l95
http://rhombus-tech.net/allwinner_a10/pcb/

look at line 95 down to 113: you'll see that that's an MII interface. MII is only 10/100 (GMII and RGMII are 10/100/1000). another way to tell is from the use of the RTL8201CP (link to the datasheet from the pcb page) which is a 10/100 PHY chip. however the EOMA-68 interface we've specified as being up/down negotiable from 10 to 100 to 1000 so that yes, future CPU Cards can be Gigabit Ethernet. that's mainly so that people can consider making ultra-low-power server farms out of commodity off-the-shelf mass-volume CPU Cards in the future. which i'm really looking forward to.

Uh, the Pi is meant an educational and hobby platform. It has a bunch of slots and connectors. This thing is obviously a commercial product without a lot of slots or connectors that's meant to be embedded in a larger product.

Not being an embedded systems person, I'd be grateful if somebody linked examples of the kind of system that uses this kind of CPU card.

can't do that. can link you to planned and discussed products though:
http://elinux.org/Embedded_Open_Modular_Architecture/EOMA-68#Example_Motherboards
http://rhombus-tech.net/community_ideas/

the first will be a laptop. we have a deadline to meet of 10th october to get 25 prototype samples ready, for our client. yes. really. that soon.

It's a schematic (actually, the picture shows a board layout)

shit. you're right. it is! no wonder the other guy said we'd be 6 months from release :) no, it's definitely a board layout. first samples will be available for testing by next week. definitely not 6 months from now.

It's not clear why you'd want an Allwinner A10 in a PCMCIA form factor. The Allwinner A10 has a sizable set of peripherals on-chip. Ethernet, HDMI, etc. Usually, boards for this part have a whole row of connectors. Bringing out the pins on a PCMCIA connector means you need another board to fan out the peripherals.

ah. right. this is covered here: http://elinux.org/Embedded_Open_Modular_Architecture

we wanted something that is user-installable and user-upgradeable. if we had wanted factory-installable (only) then we would a) not really have bothered at all, given the proliferation of offerings from direct-insight.co.uk and variscite.com and many many others b) we would have created something like the q-seven standard and, again, really to be honest, would not have bothered with that, either, because why create a competing standard?

no, you're missing a couple of points. one is that the A10 EOMA-68 CPU Card can operate stand-alone, powered by USB-OTG, booting from USB-OTG, NAND or Micro-SD as you choose, and having both HDMI out and Stereo Audio. that's not bad, right there.

the other point is that we picked interfaces that happen to be "common buses", that happen to all have backwards-compatible speed negotiation. 24-pin RGB/TTL you can drop down even to as low as 15 pin by ignoring the higher-res bits; you can reduce the clock-rate to run a 320x240 LCD or you can ramp it up to run 2048x2048 @ 30fps in full colour. USB2 goes all the way from 11mbit/sec to 480mbit/sec. SATA-II has down-level negotiation all the way to 150mbit/sec. I2C goes from something like 75khz up to 4mbit/sec or thereabouts. Gigabit Ethernet goes through 10 to 100 to 1000.

so there is a hell of a lot of thought gone into the selection of those interfaces, in order to keep the pin-count down. it was just pure luck that when you added 16 GPIOs and some power and ground that the pin-count came to *exactly* 68. jammy or what. and if you look at that interface set, it's *extremely* flexible and powerful. but i believe i know what you're saying: why didn't you make *all* the pins available? because if you've looked at the cost of user-hot-swappable 100-pin connectors, they're insanely expensive: $12 is not uncommon.

so instead, we're recommending the use of a low-cost STM32F on the other side (I/O Board side). we've tracked down the OpenEC2 project (originally the firmware for the OLPC XO-1) and intend to port it to RTEMS-lite, then extend it to provide Audio Drivers in the form of A/D and D/A converters, amongst other things. ST Micro actually recommend their 75mhz+ CPUs for use as Audio ICs. but it can pretty much cover everything. this practice is standard in x86 PCs (using an Embedded Controller) but is quite rare in the ARM world: normally you'd use the ARM CPU itself to do this job! but, because of the EOMA-68 "break", we can't do that. swings and roundabouts: it'll come out in the wash :)

This CPU card might form the core of another product, like a tablet,

or a laptop, smartphone, PDA, workstation, desktop, power-saving server, router, All-in-One LCD computer, Media Centre, IPTV, All-in-One keyboard computer, upgradeable camera, upgradeable videorecorder, games console, and many many more that have been discussed and we're always on the lookout for more - feel free to make suggestions on this page:
http://rhombus-tech.net/community_ideas/
http://elinux.org/Embedded_Open_Modular_Architecture/EOMA-68#Example_Motherboards

it's also worthwhile pointing out that we've added a DIL2-44 (2.5in IDE size) expansion header which gives access to the more common "engineer's" GPIO functions, such as an extra USB 480mb/sec, as well as AC97/I2S, dual-channel LVDS, VGA out and more; as well as adding a more "factory-style" FPC-45 which provides access to the kinds of functions that you'd see in commercial IPTV and other products (Dual Transport Streams; GPS; Smart Card, TV-IN and so on).

obviously, that "factory / engineering" mode, you'd not be able to get the standard 5mm height PCMCIA case on, but that's ok, because it's either factory-installed or being used for engineering, R&D or educational purposes. i've documented the full pin-outs here: http://rhombus-tech.net/allwinner_a10/orders/

but as a minimum you'd need a docking station to connect to everything.

not "everything": that would mean that without the docking station you'd not be able to gain access to the HDMI port, USB-OTG port, SD/MMC socket or the Audio Jack :) but i believe i know what you mean. you mean like this?
http://elinux.org/Embedded_Open_Modular_Architecture/EOMA-68/MiniEngineeringBoard

This CPU card might form the core of another product, like a tablet,

or a laptop, smartphone, PDA, workstation, desktop, power-saving server, router, All-in-One LCD computer, Media Centre, IPTV, All-in-One keyboard computer, upgradeable camera, upgradeable videorecorder, games console, and many many more that have been discussed and we're always on the lookout for more - feel free to make suggestions on this page:
http://rhombus-tech.net/community_ideas/
http://elinux.org/Embedded_Open_Modular_Architecture/EOMA-68#Example_Motherboards

it's also worthwhile pointing out that we've added a DIL2-44 (2.5in IDE size) expansion header which gives access to the more common "engineer's" GPIO functions, such as an extra USB 480mb/sec, as well as AC97/I2S, dual-channel LVDS, VGA out and more; as well as adding a more "factory-style" FPC-45 which provides access to the kinds of functions that you'd see in commercial IPTV and other products (Dual Transport Streams; GPS; Smart Card, TV-IN and so on).

obviously, that "factory / engineering" mode, you'd not be able to get the standard 5mm height PCMCIA case on, but that's ok, because it's either factory-installed or being used for engineering, R&D or educational purposes. i've documented the full pin-outs here: http://rhombus-tech.net/allwinner_a10/orders/

but as a minimum you'd need a docking station to connect to everything.

not "everything": that would mean that without the docking station you'd not be able to gain access to the HDMI port, USB-OTG port, SD/MMC socket or the Audio Jack :) but i believe i know what you mean. you mean like this?
http://elinux.org/Embedded_Open_Modular_Architecture/EOMA-68/MiniEngineeringBoard

no intro telling me what this is.

apologies. it's the first in a series of CPU Cards, based around a mass-volume modular computing initiative that allows both china factories and software (libre) developers the opportunity to work together to create desirable, affordable mass-volume computing appliances. at the risk of melting your brain with another link, here's the news article which provides some background as to why the project exists: http://www.itwire.com/opinion-and-analysis/open-sauce/52054-british-company-looks-to-create-cheap-open-platforms

allow me to go over what you wrote:

it is a PCMCIA (PC-card) sized integrated computer

correct. it can operate stand-alone via USB-OTG power, if needed. without the case on, there's access to the remaining interfaces of the A10 that we could not fit onto the 2 ends of the CPU Card.

designed to compete with the Raspberry Pi...

incorrect. this is more a commercial venture than an educational venture, with volumes approaching several million units a year. our goals almost accidentally encompass those of the raspberry pi (hence the reason why the developers were a bit rude to me on their forums a few months back: they feel threatened, unfortunately. can't be helped... *sigh*).

supposedly cheaper

incorrect. this perception is based on a misinterpretation that unfortunately was propagated through more channels than we have resources to spend time chasing down and correcting.

and faster.

correct. it's a 1ghz Cortex A8, whereas the rbpi CPU is... a 700mhz(?) ARM11. it's therefore guaranteed to be at least twice as slow.

as the scope of the rhombus tech project goes way beyond just this one CPU Card or just one device, we'll be constantly on the lookout over the next decade and beyond for upgraded CPUs, and for new products to create. we'll also review the standards: EOMA-68 is just the first. i'll risk being responsible for causing brain-melt and provide you with another link, if that's ok. http://elinux.org/Embedded_Open_Modular_Architecture/EOMA-68

No, it's not designed to compete with the Raspberry Pi.

EOMA-68 is a new form factor to fix the current rat race of upgrading to new devices, cracking the bootloaders, and just about time you get things running smoothly with open source software, *boom* it's obsolete; there's a device twice as fast at the same cost, and if you buy it, you're back to square one.

It's designed to serve as a computing core that can be dropped into various peripheral shells (e.g. netbook, phone, tablet, or settop box) and swapped amongst them at will; once you find that perfect shell (for me, the Fujitsu U2010 laptop is the closest yet, and I'm considering gutting one and converting it to EOMA-68), you can swap in e.g. ARM or MIPS cores, or even a passthru card to let your desktop drive it for debugging etc. -- you don't get stuck with the factory CPU (an aging 1st-gen Atom in my case), but left hanging on because nobody makes that lovely hardware with anything else, or because new models have a signed bootloader that has to be cracked to own your own hardware. It's also made to run entirely on open-source software -- neither of these were design constraints for the Pi, which is a computer in its own right, rather than an interchangeable component.

I think it's an interesting concept that could lead to developing usable low volume products tailored for a specific need at a low cost as long as the cost of the card ends up being under $20. It will give an architecture to develop hardware devices with an upgrade path for processor and peripherals. It's not for creating a desktop PC for the average user.

http://elinux.org/Embedded_Open_Modular_Architecture/EOMA-68

The fact that this wasn't fixed during development is pretty telling. There are plenty of commonplace devices that simply don't work, the most notable being powered USB hubs.

Here's some perspective: I have an Android tablet which I installed Debian on. The 2.6 kernel I use on it is a modified Android kernel, and the 3.1 is a beta kernel provided by Nvidia. I am yet to find a device that works under x86 Linux that is not supported by either of these kernels. Now, I'm more than willing to say that the device is a hack, plain and simple. There are plenty of bugs, some of which are show stoppers (there's a reason I use 2 different kernels on a regular basis). Yet this franken-tablet with a small handful of people intermittently working on it has better driver support than a mature product like the Raspberry Pi with hundreds of developers. That should say something about the nature of the bugs.

As parent said, this is a terrible outcome.

Moving on constructively, I would suggest fedora should just be a minimal package set and a system for managing VMs. A good way to partition each VM would be for example, each system that manages it's own packages (eg. ruby, perl, firefox). Because of the rise of multi core computing this would have no performance impact at all. The advantages of a system like this include easier system management, better security, and convenience. There will be better upgrade-ability because although fedora has no rolling releases (a shame), users will be able to create specialized appliances that they can copy over to the new version of fedora without hassle and upgrade them at their leisure. It is way easier to deal with variable-sized VM images then partitions.

Support the android mainlining project
http://elinux.org/Android_Mainlining_Project

This idea might be better implemented as an EOMA-68 to android phone converter. Then you could use any EOMA-68 compatible devices with it including, but not limited to, clamshell keyboard/screen/touchpad devices. (I.E. a netbook shell)

As far as the RPi; I'm much more interested in this EOMA-68 compatible card which uses the more powerful Allwinner A10 CPU. That gets you the capability to run a complete open source stack (including GPU) and a datasheet! (Something which Broadcom refuses to give you for the RPi even though it was designed by Broadcom employees!)

Shamelessly copy-pasted specs for the Allwinner A10:

        1.2ghz Cortex A8 ARM Core
        MALI400MP OpenGL ES 2.0 GPU
        DDR3 Controller 800MHz 1GB max
        2160p Hardware-accelerated Video playback (4x the resolution of 1080p)
        a NAND Flash Controller that is capable of 8-way concurrent DMA (8 NAND ICs)
        4 SDIO interfaces (SD 3.0, UHI class)
        USB 2.0 Host as well as a 2nd USB-OTG Interface (USB-OTG can be reconfigured as USB 2.0 Host, automatically)
        24-pin RGB/TTL as well as simultaneous HDMI out
        SATA-II 3gb/sec
        10/100 Ethernet (MII compatible)
        a 2nd 24-pin RGB/TTL interface that is multiplexed (shared) on the same pins for a standard IDE (PATA) interface.
        GPIO, I2C, PWM, Keyboard Matrix (8x8), built-in Resistive Touchscreen Controller, and much more.

Please. Sony is part and parcel of all the RIAA/MPAA lawsuits against people violating their copyright. Yet one of their public representatives is concerned about someone enforcing the terms of the GPL and seeks a way to "protect" people from them.

While I think Tim will probably continue to give his personal support the ToyBox project (note: Sony has *not* given its support to ToyBox -- that was reported incorrectly), it was clear that much of Tim's worries about Conservancy's enforcement efforts were based on rumors spread by a few people and those rumors weren't accurate.
http://lwn.net/Articles/483016/

They wanted an alternative not because it was superior but because it would allow for a legal dodge to avoid licensing compliance.

Do you object to bionic as well? In any case here's the reasoning behind the project, no real problem with that.

check the Pi wiki. Although not many people own one yet, there are a hand full of hardware extensions in the works or already available. I find it amazing how a small eco system around the Pi is already evolving:

- Expansion Boards
- Peripherals
- GPIO Documentation

Sparkfun has these BlueSMIRF BT modules which can be connected to one of the uarts of the Pi.

check the Pi wiki. Although not many people own one yet, there are a hand full of hardware extensions in the works or already available. I find it amazing how a small eco system around the Pi is already evolving:

- Expansion Boards
- Peripherals
- GPIO Documentation

Sparkfun has these BlueSMIRF BT modules which can be connected to one of the uarts of the Pi.