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Foxconn already has its own product line of computer parts with their brand.

Something like this Foxconn NT535. It's my primary "desktop" (Mounted to the back of a 19" 1280x1024 monitor) Granted, it's only an Atom and that's probably not going to do it depending on your work. For normal office work, it suffices though and it's so cheap I considered stopping dumpster diving. With machines like this, a dumpster sourced 5 year old computer pales.

There are many. Again, I buy directly from China, from various suppliers in Shenzhen, and I live in Argentina, so I have no bloody idea of where you can get them in the states.

In my experience, retailers usually don't sell this development boards, and sell instead boxes based on them. Whenever you find a retailer that does bring in that product, the price will be outrageous. My tip: You'll find suppliers in China that'll sell you as few as 50 units. Off course, if you just want 1 or 2, you can get them easily as test boards. You'll have to stay up late (a few years ago, they used to work during the night and you could just call them during the day, now they work during the day and we have to stay up at night to call them), find the board you want and who makes it in China (75% of the time somewhere in Guangdong), call them, say you represent a company doing whatever and that you were planning on buying a few hundred items every month, talk with them a few times, get a price list, and then request a small quantity (1-3) for evaluation purposes. They'll sell it at you for around 15-20% more than the wholesale price they sent you earlier, and you can get it cheaply into the country (at least that's true in Argentina and Brasil) as an evaluation item.

There are many sites that list this things and who produces them.

Here's an example, but there are many directories like this one:

http://www.made-in-china.com/productdirectory.do?subaction=hunt&style=b&mode=and&code=0&comProvince=nolimit&order=0&word=ARM+board

Be prepared for:

  - Very, very bad Engrish. Be patient.
  - Salesman that are desperate to find an excuse to leave the country, specially women, and they'll try to talk you into setting up a meeting that requires them travelling overseas (this really really happens all the time, go with the flow and get what you want)
  - Salesman that have no idea of what they are selling. Specs are scarce, and so are SDKs. They'll not send you anything. Their policy is "buy it and see what it does".
  - They never say "no". If you request something that they can't provide or don't want to provide, they just say 'yes, yes' and delay and avoid doing it.
  - When they don't understand you, they'll also go "yes, yes"

If you want to test this boards before you bring them, you can try buying some of the products that use them. There are some cheap surveillance apps (4 Channel DVRs) that use 650 mhz ARM processors, and come with Ethernet and 4 video inputs (SAA 7134). You can buy them anywhere for around $60 in China, so assume twice as much from any security wholesaler in the states.

Another thing I recommend, are this babies:

http://www.foxconnchannel.com/product/Motherboards/socket.aspx?socket_id=en-us0000010&socket_name=Atom+CPU+onboard

There are also some great fanless mobos from Intel, that come with embedded Atom processors (The single core 200 series (230,270, etc), and the 300/500 series that are dual core (330/510)).

Both of them have 2 threads per core, so GNU/Linux will register 4 fucking penguins! :)

This mobos retail for way under 100. The Foxconn mobos are cheaper, but have the same Intel cheaps. You can find the fanless Atom 270 models under $80.

Hope this helps.

Consider one of there:

atom barebones

I've got Dell hardware from the 90s working fine.

The first tyme I used one Dell, a brand new one with XP, it froze while booting up. The only thing I could do to get it working was to push in the power button until it powered down then reboot.

What's your point?

You bad mouthed Macs so I listed all the problems with Windows PCs I've had. That's my point!

Oh, and get this: I get the latest version of my OS of choice too!

I have the lated updated version of one of my OSes of choice, 10.5.7. And I plan to install another choice for an OS, Ubuntu Studio 9.04. I've been waiting for a book about it to come out, I see Amazon is now carrying "Ubuntu 9.04 Desktop Handbook" which I'll check later today to see if local book stores have it so I can check it out. I'd rather get one about 9.04 like "A Practical Guide to Ubuntu Linux" but it's not out yet.

There's nothing special about mac hardware. It doesn't last long. Apple is an OEM. Maybe quality was better back in the day

My Mac lasted more than twice as long without problems as 2 of my Windows PCs and one and a half tymes as long as a Linux PC.

Maybe quality was better back in the day, but brown iPhones, aluminum macs (seriously? it's not even thick!)

Either you're trolling or you're ignoring I said. I wouldn't get an iPhone. And my MacBook Pro is less than 2 years old. As for Macs being thin, I'd rather that than carrying a ton around, though I admit I might get a pro Mac laptop if Apple made one like a Panasonic Toughbook. And as for easy breakage, I had a Gateway laptop that I was carrying in a bag when I slipped on ice getting out of my car. It was less than 3' off the ground yet the LCD cracked. I called tech support and they said they didn't cover that. So I asked how much it would cost to repair and they couldn't even tell me, they just said between $300 and $1200. Twelve hundred dollars? That's half what I paid for it. After having it less than 3 months it became useless.

Foxconn motherboards (*shudder*)

I don't know who makes Mac logic boards but Foxconn makes motherboards for PCs. I've been thinking about getting a new mobo for my Linux PC, but I don't know what I'll get. I know it depends on what CPU I'd get but I'm not sure which one I'll get either. I know I'd like the mobo to have both USB2 and Firewire 800 and the CPU be good to use in a server, development platform, and graphics editing.

and all the issues with magsafe make me stamp a big "DONOTWANT" over apple parts.

I have not had a problem with the magsafe.

Falcon

I presently use my Foxconn motherboard with a Linux only PC. If Foxconn does not support Linux in the future, I will not be buying any Foxconn products in the future.

Dear Joe: Thank you for taking the time to make us aware of the situation and also suggestions. Foxconn has no intention to reject Linux. As we all know that Linux is an open source system and there are various flavors available in the market, and that is why we could not perform the specific function tests on every version of Linux. However, we do have tested some Linux systems previously. As for the Linux issue, our FAE team is working on this issue and hopefully it can be resolved soon. So if you have bought any retail Foxconn motherboards and got this issue please email us your system configuration and problem descriptions. We will be happy to look into it. Again, we apologize for the inconvenience this may have caused.

------

We do have tested? Not much point in getting technical with the tech support line, but hopefully if they get a few thousand pings on this the message will sink in.

You might start here.

Here is most of the original article.
The pesky junk filter meant I had to snip some of the code out - sorry.
Posting AC for the usual reason(s).

Foxconn deliberately sabotaging their BIOS to destroy Linux ACPI
Edit: Please tell Foxconn what you think of their behavior:

http://www.foxconnchannel.com/support/online.aspx

You need to put in an email, and then it will bring up a form, choose Complain/Suggest.

Edit: Welcome Digg, Reddit, and Slashdot.

http://digg.com/linux_unix/Foxconn_d..._destroy_Linux
http://www.reddit.com/comments/6tcv8...their_bios_to/
(Will add Slashdot when I know the final URL)
------------
I disassembled my BIOS to have a look around, and while I won't post the results here,I'll tell you what I did find.

They have several different tables, a group for Windws XP and Vista, a group for 2000, a group for NT, Me, 95, 98, etc. that just errors out, and one for LINUX.

The one for Linux points to a badly written table that does not correspond to the board's ACPI implementation, causing weird kernel errors, strange system freezing, no suspend or hibernate, and other problems, using my modifications below, I've gotten it down to just crashing on the next reboot after having suspended, the horrible thing about disassembling any program is that you have no commenting, so it's hard to tell which does what, but I'll be damned if I'm going to buy a copy of Vista just to get the crashing caused by Foxconn's BIOS to stop, I am not going to be terrorized.

-----
How to fix:

Get Intel's BIOS ACPI source compiler:

sudo apt-get install iasl

Dump your DSDT table:

sudo cat /sys/firmware/acpi/tables/DSDT > dsdt.dat

Disassemble it:

iasl -d dsdt.dat

Open it in Gedit:

gedit dsdt.dsl

Fix Foxconn sabotage:

Find, the section that starts out with

Code:

If (_OSI ("Windows 2000"))
{
Store (0x04, OSVR)
}

Go down til you get to the first

Code:

}
Else
{

Past that you should see Linux alongside Windows NT, which is above another Else that leads to Windows Me.

Should look like:

Code:

If (MCTH (_OS, "Linux"))

{
Store (0x3, OSVR)
}

Change it to:
Code:

If (_OSI ("Linux"))
{
Store (Zero, OSVR)
}

Copy the section, and remove it and the other characters (CAREFULLY PRESERVING SYNTAX!!!!)

Then move the Linux section to right underneath Windows 2006 section.

_Code removed to get past junk filter_

So there you have it!