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You might want to check out BuildRoot. It's what Gumstix uses for their distributions and it works pretty well.
They have even has the rt patch from Ingo Molnar merged into their standard distribution. Sounds like a Gumstix might
not be a bad way to go now that I think about it. And then you would have some pretty good community support. My $.02 ...

Use one of these: http://www.gumstix.com/

I'm always wondering why Linksys, or their OEMs, or anybody, don't sell a 'naked' router, or 'micro PC' that runs linux, and by default doesn't do much more. Developing and maintaining the firmware must cost them money, and they don't earn any money by including nagware (like Dell does), so these naked, no-firmware micro PCs should actually be cheaper than the real ones. But all i can find online which comes close to "a Linksys router without an OS, so go ahead and hack the hell out of it" would be stuff like the Gumstix or Soekris devices, which all seem way more expensive than e.g. a basic, re-flashable Linksys router.

Does anybody know of someone selling a Linksys-router-class micro-PC, that easily exposes stuff like the internal serial port, has at least one USB port, and a Wifi-module plugged in? Imagine what a standard hackable platform like that could end up doing, if it were even cheaper than the "branded" devices, and and a guarantee that alternative firmwares like like OpenWRT ran on it!

I especially don't understand why Linksys for example has header-pins for a fullblown serial port on their boards, but don't include an external DB9 connector, at least on their 'hackable' -L model.

Until now my fears were not confirmed, but this seals the deal.

You goddamn free software commies are destroying our great nation. It starts with using funky, African-named software, trading "music" with Russia, but now you're killing babies and collapsing national security.

Free software also causes global warming. Reliable tests show that FreeBIOS causes far more CO2 emissions than a proprietary BIOS. FreeBIOS also makes your processor run at a cancer-causing frequency.

The battle lines are drawn! This is where Windows users must unite and take back the world from our oppressors! Take your cancer sticks and shove them, because we want clean air!

I'd rather buy a gumstix board and run Paparazzi. The project looks really cool, and open source hardware schematics and software is available.

Well I'm a pretty young guy, but that doesn't stop me from having the same gripe as you. Luckily, http://gumstix.com/gumstix exist. 200-400mhz, bluetooth, 64mb of ram, two types of flash memory storage, wifi through a daughter board, tons of sample projects and schematics with a quick Google search, and Linux out of the box.

Now if only this fella could get the keyboard size down... he could throw in this little guy, http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php? products_id=7917the GM862, a headphone and a speaker, and you have GPS enabled GSM smartphone.

Perhaps this http://gumstix.com/waysmalls.html is small enough?

I have a legitimate use for the device, and $300 is reasonable for it. It just proves that there are only 3-4 thousand geeks who have a real use for the device.

Many people spend well in excess of $300 on their cellphone, I have not. (I view most of these cellphones as "toys")

"I'd like to support the third world's educational efforts as I think they're the only thing that can possibly save us from world war III"

you're absolutely correct. if we let the third world thrash around in the dark we'll all be the first against the wall when the revolution comes. plus it will be far easier in the future to convince these countries to participate in anti global warming, anti pollution and anti nuclear weaponization if most of the population is educated (at least in democratic nations)

"Hell, the number of people who signed up to pay $300 probably wouldn't even cover the cost of signing them up, designing packaging for shipping, etc."

I'm not sure that represents anything significant. for $25 someone at Mailbox Etc/UPS Store can "design" packaging on a individual basis. I'm sure if you shipped 3000 devices you could get the laptop+brown box for under $300.

"Mark my words, this will be used as an excuse not to sell them to the public instead of as guidance informing them that their plan was flawed but not invalid."

I'm not sure what is flawed about the idea. But you're right, this result will be an excuse to not sell to the public. Although with zero marketing having a few thousand people sign up is not a terrible result. I think the whole 100,000 people thing was unrealistic.

I bought a small hobbist "computer" (it is a really fast linux microcontroller, no display) for about $150 all said and done. I can't imagine the company that makes them has more than a few thousand users. but they keep releasing newer versions of the product. gumstix.com if you want to see pictures of it.

You'd think so wouldn't you? Actually, the original /. article was posted when the set up was gumstix-to-brainstem microcontroller. Since then, the gumstix guys have released their own microcontroller card that fits rather nicely as a daughterboard for the gumstix called the Robostix (Wiki entry here) which integrated many of the features we needed and eleminated for nasty soldering jobs to get I2C communication between gumstix and brainstem working. With these latest boards we hope to get 802.11a/b/g working so that we can finally drop the nasty bluetooth networking that has been flakey at best.

Definitely interesting stuff... pretty soon the reality of taking your computer around with you and plugging it in to a console for access to it (whether at work, etc) will be pretty common place. So it is "neat" to be able to what kind of progress is being made and what is being mass produced these days.

Netstix goodies.

My question is, is anybody here familiar with general costs for the parts that they utilized for their units? I was just wondering what an estimate would be simply for the parts involved. Of course there is alot more cost to look at, from their employees to having custom boards fabricated... but it seems quite pricey for what is involved.

Aaaargh, that is: http://www.gumstix.com/ Get about 20 of em.

Still, I suspect this (and a lot of other projects) get done a certain way simply because it's the way the people involved knew how to do it.

You've pretty much hit the nail on the head, but I don't think microcontroller-based system design is in any danger of dying out. It's just that it's mostly electrical engineers that are familiar with the huge variety of logic replacement packages that's out there, and most software types don't get very much exposure to it unless they enjoy banging on hardware too. The problem, as you correctly point out, is that there are a lot of software guys out there that just don't know what kinds of neat (and cheap!) toys are out there. It's a great example of, "when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail".

They're not 8-bit microcontrollers, but these devices are great fun to play with, not terribly expensive, and provide something to bang around on that's not a PC but is similar enough for most software guys to do something useful with.

You may want to look into Gumstix: http://www.gumstix.com/waysmalls.html Specifically, gumstix connex 400-bt w/cfstix wifi expansion.

Nowhere on their site is there a place to buy just a display, or just the material.

Also - those of you wanting to mark up the documents, etcetera - use another tool for that. E-readers will become cheap enough primarily by focusing on just reading documents, and reducing the costs involved with that.

Sometimes it's better, especially in the early stages of a technology, to have a cheap, single-purpose implementation, than a more expensive multi-function one. For example, the telephone. Early simplicity caused widespread adoption, which then created the markets for later technological improvements.

If only they had an equally small wireless module...

Is this true even if the board is, say the size of a GumStix ? i.e. a stick of gum, but with enough memory/processor for at least some games, X, a few bouncing icons, fading menus, nice boot-time greeting sound, etc.

Joking aside, is it really that difficult to shield a very small board?

Something like a gumstix device would be an ideal platform-- it has linux, it has serial, and potentially wifi / bluetooth. You could even power the thing off of the roomba battery.

These meets your CPU speed, but not your RAM reqs,
and they've a number of similar such things, including complete "waysmall"s,
but if you need that much RAM, instead of flash-storage, then mini-ITX is your only hope. . .

I have always wondered why people who buy the WRT54G to run customized firmwares don't show as much interest as in similar embedded platforms, which are in the same price range ($70 to $130), have a similar or superior hardware config [1], and allow a similar level of customization. So why the WRT54G interest you, but not those embedded platforms ?

$3000 is a lot to spend on a prototype. But it's cheap considering how new this is. Consider trying to buy an IBM PC motherboard and 640K of RAM in 1977.

You're comparing Apples to Potatos. An IBM PC Motherboard in 1977 was still a highly advanced computer board with thousands of dollars in off the shelf, but still very expensive components. The retail price for one of those things was in the range of $2500. Considering that mass production always costs less, is there any wonder that the dev boards were more than $3000?

In this case, eInk has paired their new (supposedly inexpensive) display technology with a dev board that costs less than $200. So eInk wants us to believe that their display technology costs $2800 a pop? I don't care what they say, there is no way in hell that they can mass manufacture their technology at reasonable costs if they can't produce dev units for around 2-3x the expected market price.

Seems like I've seen a similiar specification for the Blackdog somewhere before.

What I don't understand is why the MMC card on these devices is limited to 512mb. Sandisk and others already offer 1, 2, and 4GB high-speed CF cards. Is it an issue of pre-formatting, the software driver, or something else I'm missing? It would be kind of cool to have an external RAID device consisting of multiple CF cards plugged into a "CF bus."

You should have bought a gumstix insead. Or maybe a soekris.

The NSLU2 doesnt really have enough CPU for asterisk.

Try a gumstix. Not only is it much faster than a wrt54(g|gs) but you can expand it with whatever interfaces you like.

I'll throw in my vote for gumstix.

http://gumstix.com/spexExpnsion.html

They're super small, (shuffleish sized), do usb, ethernet, and other stuff. Runs linux out of the box. XScale processors start at 200Mhz. The price is right too.

Take those expressway billboards and put up Amber Alerts on them. Instead of the dot matrix text message we have on highway overpass displays, we can do full color pictures with the child's stats. The technology allows us to easily change and remove the image when the child is found (via Wi-Fi or cellular connection to Police headquarters).

The one interesting application is in cheap portable computers, but the oligopy in place knows very well that serving the low-end market would be suicide for the high-end.

What are the chances geeks will be able to get individual screens with an open interface? Pretty slim for now, but if it happens I'll put one on a waysmall and build my own cheaper, smaller, energy-efficient laptop.

This solar powered hotspot is $1,000. Maybe an alright price for a consumer product, but a little much for something you'd build yourself, here's a cheaper solution:

$189 - Gum Stix Connex 400xm-bt, a small xscale system running embedded linux
$25 - CFstix, an expansion board for the above system allowing connection of Compact flash cards
$70 - Netgear MA701 802.11b Wireless Compact Flash Adapter
Subtotal: $284

That ought to be a good replacement for the junxion system in this case, for 40% of the cost.

As for the solar power, you might want to use the same Voltaic Systems bag they used in the article, but you could deck out a bag you already have with solar panels and such and it might be a little cheaper. Hell, if you wanted you could put their solar panels and batteries in your bag, they sell them seperately!

How about a Gumstix computer with an LCD screen? Should do it.

I've been considering getting myself a setup such as this as an alternative to a PDA...

Intel bought the StrongARM processor design from Digital a number of years ago. They now produce them under the Xscale brand. They've been used in heaps of devices, including the Compaq iPAQ, and lots of small embedded boards. Apple has previously used AMD's MIPS-based processors in some of their Airport AP's. Given the Xscale's low power/heat and relative processing power, I wouldn't be surprised to see Apple use the Xscale in another funky little portable device.

Intel bought the StrongARM processor design from Digital a number of years ago. They now produce them under the Xscale brand. They've been used in heaps of devices, including the Compaq iPAQ, and lots of small embedded boards. Apple has previously used AMD's MIPS-based processors in some of their Airport AP's. Given the Xscale's low power/heat and relative processing power, I wouldn't be surprised to see Apple use the Xscale in another funky little portable device.

Actually, according to another slashdotter's comment, gumstix is smaller by almost 3 cubic centimeters. 99 euro is $127. For $109 you can get a gumstix with a 200mhz processor, 4MB flash, and 64MB of RAM. Granted, the gumstix doesn't come with built-in ethernet. It does however have almost four times the processing power and eight times the RAM. A waysmall basix can be had for $139. Add the audiostix expansion board ($40) and you've got the beginnings of a portable media player, or the like.

Actually, according to another slashdotter's comment, gumstix is smaller by almost 3 cubic centimeters. 99 euro is $127. For $109 you can get a gumstix with a 200mhz processor, 4MB flash, and 64MB of RAM. Granted, the gumstix doesn't come with built-in ethernet. It does however have almost four times the processing power and eight times the RAM. A waysmall basix can be had for $139. Add the audiostix expansion board ($40) and you've got the beginnings of a portable media player, or the like.

Brew your own

Gumstix

With platforms like THIS, what you're thinking can't be too far off. A keychain computer. Wouldn't have to be too powerful, it'd just need a small, projectable display and a virtual keyboard.

While Googling for robotic applications for the gumstix sbc, I came across this guy's page. (actually, his new page is here.) Pretty cool. He's been designing and building a small 2-wheeled bot called the Belligerator that looks like a fun little project.

The windows TCO thing is largely affected by the inexpense of hiring a Windows admin versus a Linux admin. If the difference in yearly salaries between Windows and Linux admins is more than the yearly cost of the Windows OS software, then the Windows solution is cheaper. ie, if the Linux admin costs $50k/yr and comes with free software and the Windows admin costs $38k/yr and the Windows software(s) cost less than $12k/yr then you've just put money in your pocket by choosing Windows over linux.

Linux is good for technical companies with a strong web presence because of the ease with which its technical workings can be manipulated. It isn't so hot for non-tech companies doing generic things like bookkeeping. Especially not non-tech startup companies where the Boss's son/nephew/whatever already knows Windows Server 2003 because of some class he took and he can troubleshoot all the problems for free. Everybody and their dog knows somebody who can set up a simple Windows network these days, it may even be possible to not even hire an employee. Yeah you could go with an expensive emergency service appointment with a Linux consultant, sure, but then when things go wrong and you need him ASAP, your pocketbook becomes your weak link. If it's Windows, you call Bob up from the sales floor and say "Bob, that Windows thingy is acting up again, do that thing you do." and the problem is solved within the hour, bob gets a $50 bonus, and you never have to concern yourself with how to pronounce "Linux."

Linux is gaining momentum because of the ease with which it can be customized. The flexibility that it offers both in terms of UI, peripheral interfaces, language support, all of it is becoming more and more robust. As Martin mentioned, it's possible to strip down to the bare minimum, if you wanna. Get a WaySmall computer, drop an MMC card in there with your own mini distro on it and use it for home automation or a networked webcam on your fish tank or set up an aerial cam in your R/C plane, or whatever. I see Linux making a killing in the specialty and hobby markets in the next decade because it really allows people to tinker and play and improve and scale up or down as need be, for free. It's kind of like giving somebody a sandbox with an unreasonably large amount of sand. You can do anything you want with it, all it costs you is your own time and effort. For some reason, I like the sound of that. Windows doesn't really afford that kind of flexibility, but of the things that it does do, it does them well. (I speak of Windows XP, which has been a delightful OS to use ever since I installed it many moons ago)

One is not going to have any luck doing this, though, because there is no PC with a small enough form factor. Not a Mini ITX, not even a Nano ITX.

You could put a cluster of these in a Mac Mini. Not exactly a PC, but it's an Intel board.

LK

Here's the link - E Ink used the gumstix in their prototype, and joined with Philips and Sony to make the LIBRIé.

http://www.gumstix.com/

This is probably not quite what you had in mind, but if you can come up with a display for it, perhaps you could build your own off of one of the gumstix computers.

Hmmmm...anyone know if there is anyone making external versions of synaptic's cPad unit? Might work as a combo display/input device for a gumstix unit.

Sure, a Sharp Zaurus is probably a better match for what you need (heck, I know *I* want one), but SOMEBODY has to suggest something else in this thread...

I saw a presentation on these last week, and was blown away. We're talking basically complete system with a 400 Mhz processor (~700 bogomips) the size of a stick of gum. Shitty floating point, but who cares.

Check out Gumstix SBC's. They seem to cater to individual hobbyists, and the prices look right.

the meshcube was deemed too expensive by the /. crowd, IIRC...

how about the waysmall 200ax-bt instead?

The potential advantage of this CFC thing over the gumstix (which is cool) is that the stupid client USB port on the gumstix means that it's going to be a struggle to attach USB peripherals. With the CF bus, I should be able to attach CF peripherals to the CFC easily. Presumably the next gumstix will based on a part with the new USB 2.0 controllers which can be switched between host and client modes. This would be good.

OTOH, the gumstix ARM should be substantially faster than the CFC Moto ColdFire part. Neither has an FPU, so CPU speed will matter in some applications. Not sure why the CFC didn't go Xscale like everyone else these days. Jamming 8 400MHz Xscale parts into a CF bus starts to look like a little low-power NUMA supercomputer node :-).

If you are really into tiny linux computers, you might want to check out Gumstix which are about the same size, in a different shape (like a stick of gum... get it?). It comes with USB (client not host), rs232, bluetooth, and a MMC/SD interface. Running the Intel Xscale, you can have a 200 mhz machine for a little over $100. Now if I could only justify buying one of these... maybe the tiniest wireless webserver?

They should use what they are already developing on to make the iPod: PXA2XX-series X-Scale boards!

With support for PCMCIA, CF, and MMC/SD built in, plus AC'97, serial, and LCD controllers on_CHIP_, it's a no-brainer. Plus, the X-Scale is already used in several high-quality PDAs, including a Linux-based series (the Sharp Zaurii).

One quick way to test the idea would be to recompile XDarwin for the Zaurus SL-6000. Why?
1) Put a Mac-like OS on a PDA and you're halfway there.
2) Zaurus sports the largest array of expansion types (CF, SD/MMC, _and_ USB Host!), clearly a worthy successor to the Newton's dual PCMCIA slots.
3) With the only full-VGA Sharp LG Silicon screen available in the U.S., a large pop-out thumb-board, and a 1500mAh battery, the Zaurus is a beautiful monster, overpowered and meaty... like a hand-held Mac IIfx!
4) It's ridiculously expensive... and, c'mon, isn't that a prerequisite of Macintosh *anything*?

If you're too impatient to wait for Apple to bring the iNewton to market, and too broke to afford a Zaurus, you can probably hack together your own version using a Gumstix board. I figure this homebrew Newton could probably use the Linux 2.6 kernel, XDarwin, and a spare portable DVD screen, and go by the name of iOfNewt :)

gumstix?

Ah yes. That's based on LinuxDA. That has been around for a while. Essentially it's a very old port of uCLinux designed for systems with an MMU. The hardware is on par with an old PalmIIIx or PalmV.

There was an emulator for LinuxDA floating around, what's funny about LinuxDA is that it's not Open Source at all. And the software, when I tried it a couple years ago, was quite buggy. Perhaps they have fixed it up. But the hardware for it is almost the same as it was a couple years ago. I'm surprised the company is still in business.

If anyone is interested in the specs the PowerPlay Vs can be had for $100 US ($130 CA). It has a voice recorder, stereo headset, SD/MMC slot(used as part of the mp3 player and voice recorder function), really old ass 16MHz DragonBall processor (the one with 4 shade grayscale, not the newer one with 16 shade). 2Mb flash for the OS and 8MB of ram.

You can essentially get the same hardware as a refurb from PalmOne for about $50-$60 as PalmIIIx or PalmV. And since the Linux on it is "funny" and nothing about it is open sourced, it doesn't really offer any advantages over a PalmOS based device. It's too bad really. :(

The reason I was excited about this Zire is that I know for certain that the Intel ARM (PXA) in it has a good MMU and there are known linux ports for that processor. If you just want to play with the processor Gumstix is a possible choice. Of course the Gumstix board, as cheap as it is for a dev board is actually more expensive than this Zire. Also the Gumstix has no useful I/O ports beyond two serial ports and a USB slave.

Another option for Linux PDA might be a Sony Clie. They are using Motorola ARMs in them, but I do not know if Linux has been ported to this processor and if this processor has a full MMU. (There are ARMs that don't have an MMU, like ARM thumb).

Well the thing is when you buy a StrongARM or XScale you get access to a pretty decently priced LCD controller for pretty decent resolutions. There is only a couple dollar difference between 64M and 4M in a system like that when you take into consideration the availability of SDRAM chips in that size and that most of what you pay for these things is the labor to assemble them rather.

The economics of computers are pretty weird. You can often buy a faster system for the same price or less with more memory when you take into consideration the expensive things like the prices of the periphals you will need. For example you could do 802.11 wireless on a 20MHz Z80, but it would be less expensive to do it on an embedded x86, ARM or MIPS because there are 1-chip 802.11 solutions that can interface these microprocessors directly. (rather than designing your own that would be able to talk to a Z80). Also something are common as ethernet is often placed on chip on these "beefer" systems and it ends up that it can be cheaper to get a processor that is 5-10 times faster just because of the pricing on external ethernet controllers for a slower cheaper processor.

Places sell small runs of 200Mhz and 400MHz chips with 64Mb RAM for only $110 these days. Take the Gumstix for example. What's sad is a simular device based around a 33MHz DragonBall with 8M of RAM costs abou twice as a much.

Im working on finishing my basement right now and their are no shortage of little places to fit a couple of gigs of data. But here is my thought. I bet you could fit a gumstix into a standard outlet box. Get the bluetooth version and an SD card, then just put a dummy ethernet jack or phone line into the box and viola. Easy to get to should you need the access and the last place I would ever look for a machine.

BTW, love the name, that was a great book.